CuratorSpace Artist Bursary #24: Helen Emily Davy

Helen Emily Davy works in a diverse range of media such as installation, printmaking, collage, stained glass, embroidery, and text, incorporating archival material to examine questions related to subjectivity and the body. She often directs her attention to the intersection of science, technology, and representation, excavating the power dynamics which shape their mutual interactions.

"Over the past four years I have been in collaboration with Austrian artist, Katharina Mayrhofer as part of our project, 'The Table That Doesn’t Belong To Us'. The project focuses on a table which was stolen from my family during the 'Wild Aryanisations' of the 1930s in Austria before they fled as refugees due to our Jewish heritage, and which ended up in the possession of my collaborator Katharina Mayrhofer's family through her great-grandfather, a committed NSDAP (Nazi) member.

The project was featured in an essay on creatives responses to NSDAP era stolen property in the 2023 book 'Restutuiert - 25 Jahre Kunstrückgabe in Österreich' by Birgit Kirchmayer and Pia Schölnberger, published by Czerlin Verlag, and we recently presented the project at Holocaust Centre North's conference 'Curating Memories, Materials, and Visual Histories about the Holocaust' in March 2024.

'The Table That Doesn't Belong To Us' has involved extensive research and I now have a personal archive of images and materials relating to my family and their refugee experience from which to develop a body of work. I will begin this process at the Salzburg Sommerakademie, through attending the Images After Images: Narrating History with Silkscreen Printing course, led by Philipp Gufler. The finished work will be displayed alongside the table and other contextual information at our upcoming exhibition in 2025."

You can see more of Helen Emily Davy's work at https://www.curatorspace.com/artists/helenemilydavy

 

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