Elena Gadd

I am a multidisciplinary artist creating situations of approachable uncanniness, where viewers become both subjects and perpetrators of the worlds I construct. The gallery becomes a laboratory: a place to stage discomfort, control reactions, and reflect the absurdity of our shared conditioning.  My practice explores the tensions between internal drives and social structures: how we navigate morality, memory, performance, and the grotesque contradictions of modern life. I construct theatrical, immersive tableaux that satirise rituals, class, etiquette, and collective behaviour and invite viewers to confront their impulses. Ultimately, my aim is to create encounters that are both playful and thoughtful by merging pastiche with sincerity, laying the tragicomic nature of humanity bare.

The Funeral

I see masks as vessels of truth. I use this visual connotation to direct viewers into perceiving my critique in pieces like The Funeral. The piece is an investigation into norms; how differently we all process tragedy, and distinctions between various cultures' ways of expressing grief. It can act as surrogate for viewers to project their own feelings of loss. It questions the self-conscious nature of our handling of interpersonal relations and the ridiculousness of navigating it all. Since the interactions between viewers and artworks are plays, viewers are actors wearing the mask of a character. A mask is worn in ceremonial contexts in many countries (theatre, rituals, funerals, coronations) in which one’s most individual characteristics need concealment. Its presence demands a change in attitude. It conceals expression by displaying another fixed one which allows free expression. Masks also highlight or are representative of a specific aspect of our nature by acting as caricatures of aspects of us. They are archetypes we are familiar with and use to understand the world around us. In this way, the heads and the notice boards are both specific and universal. Sincerity is mixed with farce.The emotions in each head contrast with the emotions displayed on the faces as a way to give them a 3-dimensionality of personality and highlight what social appearances conceal.