Pop-up Device for Experimenting Margins

Lera Kelemen (b. 1994) is a multimedia artist currently working in London, UK. Her practice incorporates themes about post-humanism, hybridity, feminism & technology. Her artistic practice focuses on exploring the manifestation of bodies and space through the integration of partial technologies, and devising conceptually immersive environments. In her works, surfaces and textures serve as dynamic mediums for identity and embodiment.

She holds an MA in Information Experience Design from the Royal College of Art, where she graduated with Distinction and was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize for her video work Texture is Identity. She completed her Fine Arts degree in 2018, and received 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 West London at Feelium Gallery & Studios, an initiative she co-founded.

Pop-up Device for Experimenting Margins
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’.