Eliana DAVYES BERNARDO
“Seeing an artistic identity form naturally allowing that process to reveal itself, rather than forcing it or attempting to create for the sake of creating.”
“led to the understanding that art, in its entirety has been serving me (therapeutically, aesthetically and inspirationally) and I get to reciprocate that energy through a more consciously free form approach, resulting in a freeing cycle of spontaneous and limitless creation.”
Homeless with a Roof
A self-portrait about my 10-year journey away from home. Initially as a preadolescent, then transitioning to early adulthood striving to find a sense of belonging at University. Returning home with a feeling of estrangement from what used to be home. Lastly, the experience of feeling lost in a new city, during the 2021 lockdown, attempting to build by independence without a sense of security and certainty.
Experimenting with distortion added to the already moving image.
ANDROJINNY
Androjinny is a self-portrait, homemade short film and my act of gratitude to all aspects of the journey of appreciating & disambiguating my androgynous identity, masculinity and all that comes with it; From feeling my own sexuality to fashion expression or drag: it’s all me, all real & all here for me to revel in with no learned shame following me along the way (anymore).
Holy Inversions (Intro)
Introduction to a project experimenting with sounds paired with found imagery (from my camera roll).
Biography
Eliana is an Afro-Luso audiovisual freelance artist. Exploring identity and journeys documented through, photography, video, music & sound production, poetry.
Interview
The names would be abbreviated as “Isabel” (Isabel DIERINGER) and “Eliana” (Eliana DAVYES BERNARDO).
(之后姓名分别写为“Isabel”、“Eliana”)
Isabel: How did you organise your work and life during the pandemic?
Eliana: I really didn’t! At the beginning, I completely abandoned the concept of scheduling/organising work, and what I at one point thought was a mishap, I now see it as one of the best unintentional blessings.
Thanks to this, as time went by, I adapted spontaneity as the driving force of my creative energy and productivity, essentially approaching art with a child-like standpoint: exploring with a natural impulsive flow, guided by my perception of reality and authentic curiosity.
And I suppose a lot of the organisation intentionally applied to my daily life was dedicated to releasing my old perceptions of normality and creating a new one, given the back and forth of lockdowns, tiers, flying home, back to the UK for an exhibition, work, then moving to London, and back home.
There was a genuine need to direct extra efforts into meticulous life organisation and conscious dedication to routine, as a means to maintaining my health (in all aspects of the word), in order to keep creating and finding a sense of direction and certainty during the pandemic.
Isabel：在疫情期间，你是如何安排你的工作和生活的？
Eliana：我完全没有安排！一开始，我完全放弃了安排或者组织工作这种概念，但是出乎预料的是，我发现我的无作为反而对我起到了积极的作用。
我庆幸自己渐渐地适应了，以自我的内质为动力源泉，并以一个孩子般的立场去创作艺术: 以原始的冲动去探索艺术，即以好奇心为驱使。
我想很多涉及到日常生活中的群体都被解散并重新组织，这些体现在来来回回的封锁，等级，飞回家，回到英国搬到伦敦，回到家等等。
所以，我真的需要把额外的精力投入到一丝不苟的生活中，并有意识地保持我的健康(各个层面的意义) ，以便不断创造并探索这一时期我的切身体会。
Isabel: What is different from before the pandemic?
Eliana: Mainly that there’s a daily internal conflict that I get to actively explore and work on, which dwells in personal artistic sensibilities.
Personally, before the pandemic, I was making significant progress managing my anxiety and depersonalization like symptoms and as a result, this progress created some momentum in achieving certain goals.
A year on since the beginning of the pandemic, I find myself expecting a different, deeper sense of helplessness in those fragilities. A year on since the beginning of the pandemic, I find myself experiencing a different, deeper sense of helplessness in those fragilities. However, being self-compassionate enough to consult professional help as a means to continue that progress has certainly been an empowering self-care act, directly impacting and enabling more artistic stimulation, exploring and vulnerability allowing to create and conceptualise more meaningful and authentic work.
Isabel：这与疫情爆发前有什么不同？
Eliana：主要是因为我每天都要积极探索和解决内部冲突，这种冲突深深地存在于我的生活中。
就我个人而言，在疫情爆发之前，我正在管理我的焦虑，以及剖析出相关结果等等方面取得了重大进展，并以其为我的目标造势。
然而，在疫情爆发一年后，我发现自己体验到了一种更与众不同的、更深层次的感受。所以，充满自我同情心的我开始向专业人士寻求帮助，并以其作为一种继续进行自我照顾的手段，这些直接影响了我并为我带来了更多的艺术启迪、并能让我探索和提炼出更有意义和更真实的创作。
Isabel: What is the biggest change you have gone through or found? In other words, what is your Covid-pivot?
Eliana: Definitely seeing an artistic identity form naturally allowing that process to reveal itself, rather than forcing it or attempting to create for the sake of creating.
This also led me to the understanding that art, in its entirety has been serving (therapeutically, aesthetically and inspirationally) and I get to reciprocate that energy through a more consciously free approach, resulting in a freeing cycle of spontaneous and limitless creating.
As a former constant people-pleaser, in all honestly, my covid-pivot, is letting go of the concept and concern of making “good” art, into simply allowing it to be.
Isabel：你所经历过或发现的最强烈的变化是什么? 换句话说，你的疫情转折点在哪里？
Eliana：那一定是要自然地去看待艺术的成形，并允许其在这一过程中自己显露出来，而不是为了创作而去无病呻吟。
这也推动了我对艺术的理解，其实，艺术一直在为我服务(治疗上，他在通过一种更主观的自由形成的方法来运用这种能量，从而产生一种相对更为自然的创作）。
作为一个以前一直讨人喜欢的人，老实说，我的“转折点”是“释然”这个概念，也就是简单地去释怀它的存在。
Isabel: What is your most proud creating since the pandemic started?
Eliana: In the midst of a lot of self-reflective pieces “Homeless with a Roof” is definitely the most meaningful and encapsulating creating to date.
Isabel：自从疫情爆发以来，你最喜欢哪幅在此其间创造的作品？
Eliana：在许多自我反省的作品中，“有屋顶的无家可归者”绝对是最有意义的那个。
Isabel: When did you start this project/artwork?
Eliana: The artwork came to mind and creating mid-March and was transformed and finalised in late March.
Isabel：你什么时候开始创作它的？
Eliana：这个作品是在三月中旬获得灵感并开始创作的，同时，我在三月下旬完成了对它的改造并最终定稿。
Isabel: What inspired you to embark on this project/start creating this artwork?
Eliana: It started as a therapeutic coping tool, initially as a drawing and then out of curiosity it turned into a painting.
Isabel：是什么启发了你对于这个作品的创作？
Eliana：它一开始是一个治疗舒缓情绪的工具，它最初是一幅涂鸦，后来出于好奇心的驱使，我把它变为了我的作品。
Isabel: What does this artwork mean to you?
Eliana: This is not only one of my first ever paintings, it’s also a self-portrait & narrative of the last 10 years of my life. Showing my separation from home, family and country, amounting in the destruction of my formative sense of belonging, therefore a sense of home.
Having been in Halifax, Nottingham, Manchester, London and then recently back to the country I was born and raised in, now as an adult, feeling estranged to my surroundings and family dynamic, this artwork is representative of my 10-year-old journey of detachment from my roots and reconciliation with the feeling of no longer having a home, yet always having a roof over my head.
Isabel：这个艺术品对你来说意味着什么？
Eliana：这不仅是我的第一幅作品，也是我过去10年的自画像和叙述，展示了我与家、家人和国家的分离，这相当于摧毁了对于原理故里的流离失所之情。
在哈利法克斯，诺丁汉，曼彻斯特，伦敦，然后最近作为一个成年人回到城市，感觉我的周围环境和家庭生活疏远，这件艺术品是代表性的，它代表了我被拔除的根，并调和了这种不再有一个家的感觉，我坐到之地，即我生根之处。
Isabel: Has the pandemic had an impact on your work/work plan? (Was there any change in your thinking focus?)
Eliana: The pandemic had a positive impact on how I work yet it negatively impacted my work plans outside my freelance work.
In 2019 I began working on an artistic collective with my partner, and we have made great progress with achieving our founding goals through creating a safe and free expression environment for black, Asian, Latino, and QTIPOC artists to share their creation/voices. With the pandemic and its consequences on productivity, we’ve had to change our work plan to release work that’s been in the making when the time is right.
Isabel：疫情期间对你的工作/工作计划有被影响吗? (你的想法有什么变化吗?)
Eliana：其实疫情，对我的工作方式产生了相对积极的影响，但同时也对我的艺术工作计划产生了负面影响
2019年，我开始和我的合作伙伴一起成为一个艺术集体，通过为黑人、亚裔、拉丁裔和 QTIPOC艺术家创造一个安全和自由的表达环境，我们曾取得了很大的进步。但是由于疫情及其对生产力的影响，我们不得不改变我们的工作计划，并将在合适的时机重启。
Isabel: If this applies, is there any funding for freelancers or artists in your city or in your country?
Eliana: Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any funding for freelancers in my city but it’s something I’m open to looking into.
Isabel：您的城市或国家是否有任何资助自由职业者或艺术家的援助服务？
Eliana：不幸的是，我不知道我所在的城市有没有资助自由职业者的项目，但是我对此持开放态度。
Isabel: Have your feelings about art now hanged from your first encounters with it, or rather before the pandemic？ If so, how?
Eliana: Earlier, I mentioned a few aspects of the changes regarding my feelings about art; mostly its role in my life has completely shifted from just a powerful culture-shaping & people unifying tool to purposeful devotion that I get to serve for higher motives bigger than myself or my creations, and somehow the sentiment returns and cycles back to serve me as a form of therapy, inspiration to be better, and a magnifier of aesthetically stimulation or my perception of beauty.
Simultaneously, slightly contrary yet complementary to my former approach and number 1 rule: to uphold unconventionality in every creation in order to cultivate listlessness. I’ve now come to practice a child-like approach that often heavily relies on unconventional thought based experimentation, spontaneous impulse, and free exploration, which results in more natural and liberating cultivation of limitlessness.
Isabel：你现在对艺术的感觉是否与你在疫情前对艺术的感觉有所不同？是怎样的不同？
Eliana：前面我已经提到了一些关于我对艺术的感觉变化，我认为艺术起到了一个强大的文化塑造和团结人类的作用，我有目的的奉献，我得到服务或我的创作，不知何故，情感的来回循环，成为了一种我用于发现和察觉美感的放大镜。
同时，与我以前的认知略有相悖，但是进行了一定的完善: 以收为放。我现在开始练习一种孩童的方式，这种方法十分依赖于实验、自发的冲动和自由的探索，从而去激发出更自然的无限性。
Isabel: Do you think the arts will mostly remain/move online after the pandemic?
Eliana: There’s a possibility that this will happen for the first post-pandemic phases, however, I don’t think that’ll be the case, seen as people have been confined and itching to go outside to experience life in a social setting again.
I’m positive that for the majority of people who interacted with art in person, whether as a passion, hobby, family days out, date, friend hangout, artists, etc. they’ll be the reason art will be back in galleries, exhibits and other art venues.
Isabel：你认为艺术在大流行之后还会持续转向线上吗？
Eliana：这种情况有可能发生在大流行后的第一个阶段，然而，我不认为它已经能限制住我们去外面再次体验社会环境和生活的渴望。
我很肯定，对于大多数亲自接触艺术的人来说，不管是作为一种激情，还是闲逛，还是艺术家等等，他们都是艺术将重新回到画廊、展览和其他艺术场所的原因。
Isabel: How do you know to see the relationship between technology and art?
Eliana: It’s definitely more symbiotic by the day. Unfortunately, this is a naturally biased relationship, and as technology is understood to have hereditary bias it also ends up amplifying the elitist aspects and forms of creativity.
While this relationship tends to autonomously highlight content that’s currently trending (which can sometimes be triggering/distressing to viewers) and often neglects dying art forms, this is also generating a wide wave of creators able to support themselves and innovate within their crafts in their own right, without relying on third parties or other people to get their art out there, which gives them a platform to inspire and encourage people to invest in their own passions, and that’s a crucial positive result from the relationship between technology and art.
Isabel：你如何看待技术和艺术之间的关系？
Eliana：毫无疑问，它们一天比一天更具共生性。不幸的是，这是一种天生的偏见关系，作为一种内因性的偏见，这种偏见最终也将放大艺术精英的层面和科技呈现出的形制创造力。
虽然这种关系倾向于自发地突出当前所正在流行的内容(对观众来说可以)，并且经常忽略垂死的艺术形式，但是这也产生了广泛的艺术创作者浪潮，他们能够凭借自己的手工艺品，而不依赖第三方或平台来激发和鼓励人们投资于他们自己的热情，这是科技和艺术之间的一个关键的积极因素。
Staff
Host: Isabel DIERINGER
Contact Person: Isabel DIERINGER
Planner: Isabel DIERINGER
Text: Isabel DIERINGER
Translator: Jiaqi GAO
Proofreading: Calum BAIRD
