CuratorSpace Artist Bursary #2: Romily Alice Walden

We are delighted to announce the winner of CuratorSpace Artist Bursary #2, Romily Alice Walden, who is based between London and Berlin. Romily’s work explores ideas of sickness, disability and embodiment through installation and performance.

Walden will use the award to produce her first solo exhibition outside the UK, at SOHO20 Gallery New York’s +/- Project Space in February 2019. The exhibition, entitled ‘My Body Is The House That I Live In’, will consist of sculptural installation and durational performance, using neon tubes and Arduino modules to display the artist's own levels of ‘wellness’ throughout the exhibition.

Through performing these levels of wellness, Walden aims to create an ever-evolving portrait of living with sickness, one that views gendered disability as a political issue, moving illness out of isolation and into the public realm.

This interactive portrait highlights the multiplicity of the disabled experience, inviting an audience to confront the monotonous reality of living with a chronic health condition, and to challenge their own internalised notions of wellness/sickness, disabled/able-bodied binaries. The work will be continually live-streamed to allow it to be accessible for those who cannot physically attend the exhibition.

Walden's work has been shown throughout the UK, Europe and North America in solo and group shows at institutions such as Mall Galleries, London, The Museum of Neon Art, Los Angeles, Helmut Gallery, Leipzig, The Concept Space, London and A.I.R Gallery, Brooklyn. She has also been shortlisted for the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary, named a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellow, and awarded an Axisweb artist award. She is currently a member of Sickness Affinity Group Berlin, a group of artists and arts-adjacent cultural workers who work around topics of sickness, disability and care.

Image: Work in progress 'My Body Is The House That I Live In', for exhibition at SOHO20 Gallery, February 2019.

 

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