Tangled in thoughts about the vegetal, wildness, seeds and our messy, multi-species bodies, Ella Yolande’s practice is informed by queer ecologies, ideas of resilience, preservation and the more-than-human.

The Cemetery Chapel is inhabited by a textile archway embedded with medicinal and symbolic plants. Touching on ideas of thin spaces within folklore, the sculpture provides a portal through which to imagine what might lie just on the other side, moving just beneath the surface of our understanding of the perceived world.

Video at OSR Projects

But Why Tarnish the Beauty of a Flower uses recorded attempts to virtually access and experience botanical gardens and glasshouses via Googlemaps combined with 3D scans from Kew Gardens, to consider the colonial histories of these sites. 

The video emerged from an online residency with 11:11 Residency in 2022, looking into botanical histories and the extraction and commodification of plants through the legacies of plant hunters. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Tangled in thoughts about the vegetal, wildness, seeds and our messy, multi-species bodies, Ella Yolande’s practice is informed by queer ecologies, ideas of resilience, preservation and the more-than-human. She works across video, 3D animation, sculpture, textiles and text, with references to speculative fiction, botanical architecture and protective wear. Through considering the history and medicinal properties of plants, as well as the need for mutual flourishing and rethinking the human body as individual, she explores our interwoven existence with our surroundings through playful thinking on speculative ecologies. Ella is currently based in London studying a Masters in Art and Ecology. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Skaftfell Seyðisfjörður, Melkweg Expo Amsterdam, Artcore Gallery Derby, with screenings including the Coventry Biennial 2024, Videoity’s Utopia Today 2024 and Fiber Festival 2021 with a solo exhibition in Nunhead Cemetery Chapel, London 2024.

ARTIST WEBSITE