Neva Elliott Artist Statement

Sending messages to the sea. 2022

Artist Statement

My work is about loss, grief, and healing, centering on my own experience. I attempt to crack open the autobiographical, migrating from private events where the artist is both observer and observed, using myself to communicate with people through shared human experiences.

With performative gestures, coping mechanisms and transparent vulnerability as the basis of creating the image, my work is a place for an unravelling, a channelling of trauma-induced hyperarousal and dissociation, a space to explore fears, a survival strategy baked into the act of making. It is an offering to my anguish and anxiety, a petition to ease it, a prayer in reverse. The image coming after the happening, linking visual form and emotional occurrence; a lyrical conceptualism that blurs art and life.

“When I feel out of shape, photography is my cure.” – Sakiko Nomura