Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva

Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva is a contemporary visual artist working across a range of media, including sculpture, installation, video, sound, photography and architectural interventions. Her materials range from the extraordinary to the ordinary and the ephemeral or discarded to the highly precious; they have included organic materials, foodstuffs and precious metals, from caul fat to gold leaf. Central to her practice is a response to the particularities of place; its history, locale, environment and communities.

Elpida has worked in collaboration with a variety of organisations including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Forestry Commission and The Vatican, as well as in Cathedral settings and National Trust properties. She understands the complexities of place and negotiations necessary to realise work in diverse often fragile settings. For Making Beauty (Djanogly Gallery, University of Nottingham 2016 and Daniele Arnaud Gallery, 2017) Elpida worked collaboratively with medical researchers creatively exploring diseases of the bowel.

Elpida has extensive exhibition and commissioned experience nationally and internationally, for gallery spaces, museums and within the public realm. Her major installation Haruspex was commissioned by the Vatican, for the Pavilion of the Holy See, at the 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venzia. A previous work Silentio Pathologia was commissioned by the National Gallery of Macedonia for the 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. Site specific works have been commissioned and developed in urban and rural sites, in interior and exterior spaces, including Nymans Gardens, West Sussex; Fabrica Gallery, Brighton; Mottisfont Abbey, Hampshire; Pied à Terre, London; Gloucester Cathedral, Bennachie, Aberdeenshire; L’H du Siège, France; Kilmainham Gaol Museum, Ireland.

Hadzi-Vasileva is interested in how the exchange of knowledge might develop through collaborative working and in the contexts of landscape, heritage, science and community as offered by each location. Hadzi-Vasileva’s artworks are in public collections internationally including The Vatican; Office of Public Works, Ireland; Križanke, Ljubljana; Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Napoli, Italy; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art and New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge and private collections around the world.