About
Angela Edwards is a London based artist working as a painter ,sculptor ,performance , installation and conceptual artist . She works mainly in the mediums of painting , film , Print , Internet found footage , AI ,sound ,sculpture ,metalwork, ceramics needlework, and extreme ritual body performance art .Her works themes explore sacred sexuality ,sacred sex work , western magical traditions , sexuality , death and eastern spiritual metaphysical philosophies .
Her essays have been published in philosophical anthology books on sacred sex work /shamanism and presented internationally extensively.
She has previously received British and Norwegian Arts council funding towards her on going ritual performance work .
She currently holds a MFA from Chelsea College of Arts {ual} and she was awarded the Stanley Picker Gallery in association with Kingston university Bursary to continue her research and studies .
In her body of multi media installation work sculptures constructed of steel , concrete ,urbanised materials of the modern industrial age merge with the ancient aspects of ritual , myth , decaying organic matter of poisonous plants and traditional older craft working methods techniques such as ceramics .To construct a portrait of the human self and environmental western modern world in fluxed demised broken chaos .
Materials are used to communicate a deeply modern individual language of the practitioner and the artist. Holding a respect for Art historical contextualisation ,with the role of the artist as a conceptualist and maker in the traditional execution of the work .
Core themes of the artist and work in Jewish heritage are reflected in the ideologies of monotheism a belief in the universe as one God and all aspects of the individual self and modern environments incorporated into one body .
Her ongoing research with her work is into sacred sexuality , ritual ,erotic primitivism , the human condition death , ritual through extremes , the ecstatic experience , psychosexuality , western mysticism , Judaism {cabala }and spirituality .Drawing upon also her first hand involvement for years creatively with several counter/subcultural communities, such as body modification ,modern primitivism , bdsm , queer and the occult .
She previously entered a two year starting in 2010 project working as a sex worker and professional submissive and full straight sex work . After working previously on the streets as a forced sex worker in her early teenage years to explore sacred sex work and the empowered female icon within action through her art .This formed the basis of using sex work as a two year endurance art/research project started after a set of performance works starting with a two hour performance ritual of cutting sigils to the sacred whore into her naked flesh until the whole body was covered , this project then has been extended through research into several extreme body art endurance pieces expanding on the philosophies of sex , death and sacred female sexuality .
This has included ritual film journals and art produced reflecting the direct impact and spiritual philosophy around sex death and sacred sex work.
Her performances are one off extreme ritual acts that force the onlooker to confront their own limitations and mortality .These performances are used as a tool in trances as one off experiences { usually two a year produced maximum } for the artist to reach a heightened spiritual state .
Her current work now reflects our wider ideas in contemporary society towards sex death and spirituality .
Recently working with extreme internet found footage of sex and death to manipulate telling the story as related to the human condition and the start of the cabala universe . She uses the idea of a secondhand transgressive experience via the net . This film is now over two hours long incorporating ideas of spirituality philosophy and the human existence .The film was constructed of real documentation found on the dark web with over five hundred sampled sounds of sex and death breathing layered over it .
As an extension of this work and the previous work exploring the extreme human experience through the artists own body she ran images through AI to create a AI computer generated documentation or film of spirituality and the human condition .
The AI interpreted these extreme acts human conditions , fragility and spiritual elements of the raw human visceral experience through this work
She also used computer generated AI breathing and heartbeats to layer the sounds to this work. This work questions how close is AI to understanding the human visceral experience or what it is to be human and emulating our more base instincts .If the AI understands decay or death or flesh or living organisms and can we trigger a audience into a uncomfortable emotive experience of human connection through this art collaborated on with and produced by the AI . Can the AI translate then human existential experience as a none human entity etc .
Copyright © Angela Edwards 2022