ABOUT
Ela Kazdal (b. 2001, Istanbul) is an artist based in London. Developing her practice from a background in cinema, she works with film, video, print and sculpture - with a focus on personal and collective archives. Working primarily with 8mm, 16mm and 35mm film in the past, she is concerned with how images translate between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. Kazdal relates to various meanings of ‘film,’ being both the two-dimensional projection of moving image and inherently an object. This distinction of film challenges her to build upon its (im)material properties, at times resulting in analog-digital hybrids. She has presented her films at Everyman Cinema in London, Æden in Berlin, Salt Beyoğlu in Istanbul as part of the 4th Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival and in the UK tour of Platform Asia’s ‘Germinate’ screenings at Firstsite, Fabrica Gallery and Royal College of Art. She is an artist of Display Fever.
In a more or less conscious way, Ela takes the forms from the existing social bonds that she is a part of, and cautiously re-stitches the relational fabric in her own immediate experience. The moments of sociability and exchange that she produces provide the underlying pattern of her films. Through filmmaking, Ela renegotiates the meaning of kinship and tests its limits according to the viewer’s encounter with her works. Acting within a confined and seemingly-broken structure, Ela expands the possibilities of relationships by engaging them in a covert creative collaboration. In fact, the evaluation of these relationships are never openly revealed, but remains in the background of the work, weaved among reminiscences and past experiences from the artist’s life.
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Image Credit: Tom Benson
Ela Kazdal (b. 2001, Istanbul) is an artist based in London. Developing her practice from a background in cinema, she works with film, video, print and sculpture - with a focus on personal and collective archives. Working primarily with 8mm, 16mm and 35mm film in the past, she is concerned with how images translate between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. Kazdal relates to various meanings of ‘film,’ being both the two-dimensional projection of moving image and inherently an object. This distinction of film challenges her to build upon its (im)material properties, at times resulting in analog-digital hybrids. She has presented her films at Everyman Cinema in London, Æden in Berlin, Salt Beyoğlu in Istanbul as part of the 4th Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival and in the UK tour of Platform Asia’s ‘Germinate’ screenings at Firstsite, Fabrica Gallery and Royal College of Art. She is an artist of Display Fever.
In a more or less conscious way, Ela takes the forms from the existing social bonds that she is a part of, and cautiously re-stitches the relational fabric in her own immediate experience. The moments of sociability and exchange that she produces provide the underlying pattern of her films. Through filmmaking, Ela renegotiates the meaning of kinship and tests its limits according to the viewer’s encounter with her works. Acting within a confined and seemingly-broken structure, Ela expands the possibilities of relationships by engaging them in a covert creative collaboration. In fact, the evaluation of these relationships are never openly revealed, but remains in the background of the work, weaved among reminiscences and past experiences from the artist’s life.
Text by Jael Arezi
Image Credit: Tom Benson