Elisa Artesero is a UK-based Light and Text Artist using installation, sculpture and photography to address themes of transience, the nature of happiness and hope. She has exhibited in the UK, Iceland, France, Montenegro and the Faroe Islands and creates commissions for festivals of light and public art installations.

As an artist how do you keep up with what is happening in the art world?

Instagram is my visual go-to for keeping up with artists, curators, museums and art galleries on a day to day basis. For a more in-depth look at what’s going on, I have subscriptions to many art magazines from Frieze to Aesthetica, all the way to Crafts Magazine, which gives a good breath of information on what’s happening across current artistic practice. As life opens up a little more now, I love to go to galleries both large and small, and in Manchester (where I’m based), there is so much going on from well-established spaces, to the huge network of artist studios that span across the region and have been showcased at the biennial Manifest Arts Festival, of which I’m co-director. It’s an exciting place to live and I’d encourage anyone to visit.

What is your favourite work of art and why?

This is difficult as I have so many artworks that I love! I’ll cheat a little and give two, although even they don’t fully represent all that I like.

The first is Paul Klee’s 1939 Forgetful Angel. I’m enchanted by the absolute expression conveyed in so few lines. This artwork follows me through life in the form of a postcard I have in my wardrobe that I catch a glimpse of each time I open the door. It’s both humbling and delightful.

Kurt Hentschlager’s Zee 2008 is perhaps one of the most impactful immersive audio-visual installations I encountered while studying at art school. There are many wonderful, illuminated fog rooms interpreted by some brilliant artists, but this one gave an almost enlightening experience eliciting fear, and then an ultimate surrender, I could have stayed there for hours. In fact, I’d love to go back.

What is your favourite art book?

Art book and artwork in one, Rinko Kawauchi’s Illuminance is wonderfully curated photography. Through her lens, Kawauchi brings beauty and ephemerality through the most inconsequential of subjects, combined with some utterly magical captures of light. Visually and soulfully nourishing.

What are you currently working on and what inspired you to make this work?

The pandemic put a lot of my work on hold for a year, so I was left, like many, to wait for things to start again. In the meantime, I explored what I could within limited home space, which turned out to be fruitful as I had almost a mini art foundation again, where I experimented with drawing, photography, and other different ways of expressing myself. I drew every day, which is unusual for me as I’m more of a writer (as a text-based artist).

This year, things started back up again, and my sculpture The Garden of Floating Words which was selected for Sculpture in the City editions 9 and 10, has been purchased by the building it stands outside, 70 St Mary Axe, in the centre of London. This means it will remain as a permanent piece of work, with which I’m absolutely delighted. I’m also working on another permanent art scheme in Oxford, where I have worked with the landscape architects to integrate three connecting artworks into the scheme, this will open later in 2021.

What would you like a collector to look at and know about your work?

My work is about transience and ephemerality. While I am best known for my larger sculptures and installations in the public realm for people to take a moment to pause in their busy day; I also create smaller works and commissions covering the same themes. These take the form of framed artworks, handmade glassware and small text-based sculptures that interact with light within interior spaces. I’m happy to go through these options with a collector for existing or bespoke pieces.

elisaartesero.com