Hidden
A research and moving image project on the relationship between hidden disability and the companion-working plant Callisia Fragrans.
Online Premiere
Artist Bio: Olga F. Koroleva (she / they, Tatar First Nation) is UK-based artist – curator – un-academic researcher – forager – lecturer, Qi Gong practitioner. Her work honours slow practice and self-care while exploring ways of non- exploitative cohabitation with multiple others on this planet. She works primarily with expanded research cinema, and is the founder of the international peer group The Political Animal. She has taught at The Royal College of Art, London, The School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University, Wimbledon College of Arts, Chelsea College of Art and Design, and Bucknell University, PA, US. Her recent work has been made possible with funding from the Arts Council England. Her moving image work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at UCL Museum of Art, and V&A Museum, and The Showroom, London. Her original written work has been commissioned for Ocean Archive, TBA21-Academy and CSPA Quarterly. She was a Film Practice Fellow at the Centre for Film and Ethics, Queen Mary University of London (2019 - 2022), and Research Affiliate at FEELed Lab, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada (2023). She is the founder of Meditate Medway, a disability and queer friendly breathing, meditation, and Qi Gong initiative based in Medway, Kent, UK. @olgakoroleva_studio
More about the film: Hidden (2023) is the latest iteration of my research and moving image project on the relationship between hidden disability and the companion-working plant. It marks a new trajectory in my practice that explores vegetal narratives concurrent in humans and plants, tracing colonial patterns of medicinal plant travel in the longer term.The film is based on my personal experience and life practice of managing fibromyalgia, a neurological condition that manifests in muscle and nerve pain all over the body by working closely with the plant Callisia Fragrans, while both of us experience displacement, encounter and adapt together to less than hospitable places of habitation.The work is both a marvel at the plant's medicinal properties and beauty, and a critique of the western scientific approaches favouring observation and empirical evidence, including the need to dissect and see in order to believe, over intuitive and embodied knowledges inherent in indigenous worldviews.
Hidden
A research and moving image project on the relationship between hidden disability and the companion-working plant Callisia Fragrans.
Online Premiere
Artist Bio: Olga F. Koroleva (she / they, Tatar First Nation) is UK-based artist – curator – un-academic researcher – forager – lecturer, Qi Gong practitioner. Her work honours slow practice and self-care while exploring ways of non- exploitative cohabitation with multiple others on this planet. She works primarily with expanded research cinema, and is the founder of the international peer group The Political Animal. She has taught at The Royal College of Art, London, The School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University, Wimbledon College of Arts, Chelsea College of Art and Design, and Bucknell University, PA, US. Her recent work has been made possible with funding from the Arts Council England. Her moving image work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at UCL Museum of Art, and V&A Museum, and The Showroom, London. Her original written work has been commissioned for Ocean Archive, TBA21-Academy and CSPA Quarterly. She was a Film Practice Fellow at the Centre for Film and Ethics, Queen Mary University of London (2019 - 2022), and Research Affiliate at FEELed Lab, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada (2023). She is the founder of Meditate Medway, a disability and queer friendly breathing, meditation, and Qi Gong initiative based in Medway, Kent, UK. @olgakoroleva_studio
More about the film: Hidden (2023) is the latest iteration of my research and moving image project on the relationship between hidden disability and the companion-working plant. It marks a new trajectory in my practice that explores vegetal narratives concurrent in humans and plants, tracing colonial patterns of medicinal plant travel in the longer term.The film is based on my personal experience and life practice of managing fibromyalgia, a neurological condition that manifests in muscle and nerve pain all over the body by working closely with the plant Callisia Fragrans, while both of us experience displacement, encounter and adapt together to less than hospitable places of habitation.The work is both a marvel at the plant's medicinal properties and beauty, and a critique of the western scientific approaches favouring observation and empirical evidence, including the need to dissect and see in order to believe, over intuitive and embodied knowledges inherent in indigenous worldviews.
