Author Archives: Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva

About Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva

Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva
 is a site-specific installation artist working across the varied media of sculpture, installation, video and sound, photography and architectural interventions. Her materials range from the unusual to the ordinary and the ephemeral to the precious; they include organic materials, foodstuffs and precious metals. Central to her practice is a response to the particularities of place; its history, locale, environment and/or communities.
Over the past ten years, she has exhibited extensively and realized numerous commissions nationally and internationally, in gallery spaces, museums and within the public realm. Recent sites and commissions include Pied à Terre, London; Gloucester Cathedral, Gloucester; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; Southgate Shoping Centre, Bath; Kilmainham Gaol Museum, Ireland; ArtSway at 51st Venice Biennale and Public Room, Skopje. She graduated in Sculpture from Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow in 1996 and the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva has been selected by the Minstry of Culture of Macedonia to represent Macedonia at the forthcoming 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, working with the National Gallery of Macedonia, this summer. Elpida is also currently developing a new commission for mima and Engage as part of the Alexandra Reinhardt Memorial Award Artist Residency and a new work for the artSOUTH project at Mottisfont Abbey. She is also developing a new art and medicine project with Dr. Richard Day and Professor Alastair Forbes at University College Hostpital, London.

Wellcome – UEA

In the endoscopy unit with Dr Cinzia Papadia.

Finding it so fascinating how many textures and colours are available in our colon

Wellcome – UEA

Spending a day in the operating theatre, as an observer, with Mr Irshad Shaikh at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

The big preparation for the first operation:

Wellcome – UEA

Back in the endoscopy Unit at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, with Dr Cinzia Papadia

Wellcome – studio work

Back at studio drawings made with fat, using call fat ‘imprinting’ techniques

Wellcome – Eastman Dental

The production of the biodegradable glass scaffold, used to support tissue which is being repaired. However it is very fragile and degrades in air, so a delicate nonviable structural support, which seems impossible.

I am in the process of experimenting and looking at developing work from biological glass scaffold production – taking the fibres, which are virtually invisible, using the spinning manufacturing process to make forms to be manipulated into sculptures. In medical use the fibres are tested with current and light, so these sculptures can in turn act as screens or digital devices which can be enhanced with images sources from the gastroenterology department.

Work developed from biological glass scaffold production – taking the discarded products of the manufacturing process – in effect drips and stalagmites of the biological glass, as source materials for a small sculpture.

Wellcome – UCL

Zebra fish embryos which are bleached to determine sex, this made the fish transparent, which is interesting to me as my practice is very much about making the invisible, visible.

Embryo bleaching with Vanessa Lowe:

Wellcome – Bartlett

Visiting Bartlett School of Architecture and looking at the possibilities of using 3-D printing and robotic milling, perhaps other architectural processes, to upscale the microscopic devices and experiments.

Some already printed examples by Richard Beckett and Martyn Carter:

Wellcome – studio work

I am testing using fine metal cable wire, threading it through the lamb intestine, (like the technique used to damage arteries, or endoscopy). This give the intestine sculptural strength so it can be used in ways I’ve not been able to do before.

Preparing and cleaning lamb intestines:

Wellcome – studio work

Back at the studio experimenting with lamb and pig intestine’s, borrowing the air-enema approach used in the hospitals which in addition to giving the intestines form, makes the detail much more visible. I am making number of small works in progress to date and plan to develop this further.