Lera Kelemen holds an MA in Information Experience Design from the Royal College of Art, where she graduated with Distinction. She completed her Fine Arts degree in 2018, and was honoured with the Art Encounters Award for her graduation project.
Selected residencies and exhibitions include: Green Skin/Crevice solo show at Borderline Art Space (RO, 2021), I Feel Something, Don’t Know What group show at Zacheta Gallery (PL, 2021), Green Skin/Affective Interstice at Art Encounters (RO, 2021), Kunsthalle Bega residency (RO, 2019), Niki Artist-Run residency (DE, 2020), TM2023 commission (RO, 2020), Staycation group show at Catinca Tăbăcaru Gallery (RO, 2022), If Anything Else Survives at Potential Project (GR, 2021), Royal College of Art grad show (UK, 2022).
In 2022, she published her first artist book featuring a series of installations created between 2019 and 2021.
She presently works from her studio in Central London at Feelium Gallery & Studios, an initiative she co-founded.
A self-published artist book comprising of works created by artist Lera Kelemen in her collaborations with different art institutions. This publication is a mile stone in the artist's career, using it as a way to reflect on the formative years of her installation-based practice.
- Published in June 2022
Editorial Content LERA KELEMEN
Design CAMILLE LE FLEM
Print RAPIDITY, LONDON
Papers PEREGRINA MAJESTIC & MUNKEN LYNX SMOOTH, G.F. Smith
Typeface GRANTHA SANGAM MN
With the kind support of MARK LOCKERY
Printed copies available upon request
Installation View at Art Encounters Foundation
April 2021
Green Skin / Affective Interstice began as a personal exercise to look at the solid surfaces of the built environment from a vulnerable and feminine standpoint. Textures were analysed as areas of mediation of the human, built and natural interactions on a microscopic level. The video work Texture is Identity was screened at Art Encounters Foundation, Zacheta Project Room, Borderline Art Space and Media Art Festival Arad.
Installation View at Zacheta Project Room
Solo Show
Installation View at Boderline Art Space
September 2021
The installation brings together a compendium of surfaces and structural elements mapped onto the gallery floor to create a network of pathways. A building can be divided into surface and plan. Le Corbusier claims that the surface is what envelopes the mass and that the task of the architect is to ‘vitalise the surfaces which clothe these masses’. In other words the surface is the epidermal layer, the fabric that conveys the identity of a building, and at the same time the facet through which the living, moving world interacts with constructions.
TM2023
December 2020
The installation reproduces the architectural style of a typical house from the rural area of Banat, Romania, tracing its contour at a 1:1 scale. This abstraction of the shape highlights the house as an archaic document that is slowly disappearing against the backdrop of gentrification and urban development. Arguing that frontiers are abstract notions rather than physical boundaries, the structure creates the premises of a space where inside and outside become relative dimensions. This space invites the audience to reflect on the personal and collective processes that define the private and public spheres and on the way in which people relate to the space of ‘the other’.
Installation View at Aici Acolo Pop-up Gallery
October 2021
The installation uses imagery from this landscape to highlight how material travels from nature, to constructions, to spaces of intimacy.
Installation View at Niki Artist Run Space, Zinnober
September 2020
The project analyses ancient signs and techniques of data encoding, comparing them to modern computing processes. The installation draws inspiration from Giulio Camillo’s Theatre of Memory, a sketch through which the philosopher attempts to visualise the materialisation of human memory via a physical space, and enlarges this structure at a 1:1 scale. This semi-circular structure has eight subdivisions corresponding to the different sections of the Memory Palace.
Installation View at Kunsthalle Bega
April 2019
The cabin is made of four detachable pieces which, when assembled, determine the shape of a rectangle. Four speakers are incorporated in the shapes transforming the cabin into a resonant cavity. The audience is invited to read instructions in a small booklet and place themselves in the cabin or move the pieces around, exploring how the sonic image changes accordingly. Inside a closed shape, the body stumbles upon the limitations of the space, as well as of its own physicality. Movement is progressively inhibited as the space becomes populated with objects, either through their position, scale or materiality. These features turn into conventions that dictate, prevent or enable motion.