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Where did you go, are you here? 2025

Elaina Venn, Where did you go, are you here? 2025, installation view. Courtesy the artist.

Elaina Venn: Project overview

In my studio practice I am building a world from my own childhood trauma that explores the reliability of my memory via sculptural objects that no longer mimic reality. I look to the past and question an event where i saw a ghost of my sister. The project where did you go, are you here? examines the reliability of memory, my family’s silence surrounding death and I ask what is a ghost?

With the title where did you go, are you here? I am aiming to examine absence and loss by bringing the past into the present by reconstrucing elements from my childhood bedroom. Where did you go? questions what happens when someone just disappears and are you here? Asks can you come back? The project draws on ideas from theories of hauntolgy, the real and the uncanny.

I am drawn to examining the ambiguous in absent interiors, negative spaces, shadows, line and abstract forms. All of which are open to interpretation, some you recognise and others you don’t. This transformation of the object represents how my memories are fragmented. The objects have become dysfunctional and uncanny, tables are collapsing, chairs are behaving strangely, children’s games are unplayable, there are dark mirrors. This is a blackened world where hollowed out wooden frames resemble a psychological state. Fragmented pieces, geometric shapes and ladders seek an exit but they are going nowhere. What I aim to do is bring memories into the present where I can examine a haunted past, challenge what is real and what is not but more importantly remember someone that was.