COVID MASTERPIECES
Artists:
Elina Virdziniece
Martina Kosta Diankova
Ruth Dagan
Christy Lo Lok Lam
YiChen HO
Helen Lee
Marie Ruprecht
Lois Notebaart
Renata Franzky
Lucia Pinzani
Christina Geoghegan
Louise Byrne
DISCOVER ARTISTS:
ELINA VIRDZINIECE, LATVIA/UNITED KINGDOM
Elina Virdziniece is a Latvian multidisciplinary artist currently working between England and Latvia. She works across installation, painting, and moving image, creating immersive experiences through mixed medium across screen and space. She has been awarded a Bachelor of Arts from Birmingham City University and a Master of Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Elina draws most of her inspiration from the sea, her abstract paintings are the result of a translation of emotions through an encounter with form, texture, and colour. Blues are often recurring in her work. She approaches each medium in a specific way - from moving image to installation and oil painting, each of them is characterized by a different process. The technique of oil painting consists of overlapping, layer by layer, of different colours and textures. She has exhibited in the United Kingdom and the United States.
MARTINA KOSTA DIANKOVA
Has Greek and Bulgarian origin and currently living in Greece. Martina is a professional
dancer and choreographer. She is one of the co-founders of Revelators dance company. The
company has choreographed since 2016 four performances that are presented at various
festivals in Greece. Martina also has choreographed one solo work presented in theaters and
festivals around Greece. She is member of the youth dance company since 2015 with
choreographer Zoi Efstathiou. Since 2017 she teaches yoga in Greece and around Europe.
Performances include collaborations choreographed by Christina Sougioultzi, Penny
Diamantopoulou, Alexandros Stavropoulos and Maria Gorgia.
Inspirations include nature, music, and the body, that are drone by freedom, limits, fears,
independence, balance, rebirth and nakedness. In this project, she explored the relationship
of the naked body-as a part of nature- and space.
RUTH DAGAN, NETHERLANDS
Ruth Dagan was born in Jerusalem in 1958 to the artists Hannah and Abraham Yakin. She received a B.A. in textile design from the Rietveld Academy of Art in Amsterdam and has lived in the Netherlands ever since. Originally, her main professional interest after graduation was putting on muppet shows for children. However, after a transformative journey, she took up painting.
During her career Dagan has written and illustrated five books, and has exhibited in the Netherlands and the United States. In recent years Dagan’s work has expressed concern for the world, specifically the hope that humanity will see the world as one, reduce overconsumption, and work to protect living and vegetative nature for the benefit of all kinds of life on earth.
The written word often serves as the springboard for her work. Dagan interprets texts such as fairy tales and Bible stories, illustrating them in drawings, objects or photographs. In her visual work she also likes to reference famous artworks, creating a dialogue with them and connecting the past to the future.
Her current masterpiece is entitled “The last supper of the world” which calls to mind the work of Leonardo da Vinci as well as with the images of photographer Adi Ness. The painting depicts people sitting around a round table symbolising the world. The world map looks fluid, hinting at global warming and serving as a nod to the ecological crisis that is at least partly caused by human greed.
At the top of the painting are woodcuts, which spell out “redemption” in Hebrew sign language. The dove of peace flies in the opposite direction. The painting also has plenty of hands, symbolising that same human greed.
The figures are dressed in clothes on which political maps are painted, whereas the tablecloth sports a geographical map. The message is clear: for global problems to improve, humanity needs to see the world as one. In addition, natural disasters and viruses - such as the Coronavirus - pay no heed to the territories carefully delineated by man.
To create this painting, Dagan photographed her family in Jerusalem in January 2020. Only a few months later, her father passed away. Due to lockdowns in Israel and the Netherlands she could not travel to bid him a final farewell, and consequently the work also came to represent the "last supper" of her complete family.
CHRISTY LO LOK LAM, CHINA
Christy, Lo Lok Lam 盧樂琳 (b. 1997, Hong Kong ) is a multimedia artist whose work deals with different forms of connection while also reflecting on the contemporary world. She received a B.F.A. in Fine art Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design in March 2020. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she moves to Georgia at the age of 20. She has exhibited her work in group exhibitions internationally, including galleries and international art fairs. Her first group exhibition was in 2015 at the Affordable Art Fair as a featured artist by Sovereign Art Foundation in Hong Kong. In 2017-2019, her paintings have participated at Open Studio Night at SCAD in the United States. Her first solo show Unpeeling/施 exhibited in the early in the winter of 2020. She has recently contributed as a summer artist residency in the Kunstraum studio, Brooklyn, NY.