Inherent Beauty - Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva

Our skin reflects our age and our ancestry, our state of health and our cultural identity; it communicates much of what the world knows about us. Skin is visually perceived to provide involuntary insights into hidden things. It is a multilayered, multipurpose organ that shifts from thick to thin, tight to loose, wet to dry, across the landscape of the body. Lacking definitive boundaries, skin flows continuously from the exposed surfaces of the body to its hidden cavities and organs.

...Inherent Beauty pleads towards a specific visual beauty whose essence is creation of something beautiful through ugliness, if we may so crudely determine this discourse. It is a new geography of art both literally and by implication. The objective roughness, bluntness and ugliness of the medium that Hadzi-Vasileva uses (e.g., membranes from a pig’s stomach) are reformed Nature, metamorphosed through the artist’s skilled hand and into an artwork that gains new subjectivity and therefore narrative which has both a general and individual thought stimulations. As Adorno says, “Every Beauty surrenders itself to constant analysis”, and this is particularly true in the work of Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, where the object and the subject of her art enjoy an equal role in the building of concepts and artistic arrangements and at the same time are subject to analysis and synthesis for their own interpretation.
The visual sensation of her concept (membranes of pig stomachs fixed onto a black base in a square frame, like miniatures, measuring 20cm x 20cm, and as such mathematically arranged into a synchronized system that is positioned on a wall, thus brings up associations of tapestry) lies in the multiple monochromatic mimesis of the spectacle, which changes from square to square, with an accent on texture as a dominant element and at the same time creating a rhythmically visual dynamic. Every square has its own different poetry, its own stamp, existence and pulse...
Ana Frangovska, curator - read more

The independent cultural organization Public Room is sincerely honored to host an exhibition by one of the most prestigious contemporary artists Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva. I met Hadzi-Vasileva and I was introduced to her work for the first time at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. I could not remain indifferent and abstract myself from arranging an exhibition in Skopje... As with most of Hadzi-Vasileva work’s, “Inherent Beauty” does not address to any social or political category or a particular problem. For that reason her work communicates with all kinds of audiences on different levels, regardless of the geographical area or individual orientation. However, the work has a sharp expression, shocking the audience and making them think profoundly about unlimited art approaches, vis à vis media and the artist. These works by Hadzi-Vasileva get engraved as mementos in the minds of the audience...
Aleksandar Velinovski, director Public Room - read more  

Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva biography