Intertwined Destinies

Our world is facing existential challenges, again and again, every day anew, and currently to a particularly high degree. Every place, every person, nature and humanity – everything is affected, no one can take themselves out of the game, because all are interconnected. Local disruptions have global consequences, the worldwide exploitation of the earth causes transformations that no one can escape. Every injury triggers a healing process, every upheaval an adjustment procedure; the consequences are passed on layer by layer; every individual action is actively and passively linked to the whole world. These pan-global interdependencies spread, continue, sneak in and find artistic expression in the work of Ellen Driscoll.

In her multilayered paintings and sculptures, the New York-based artist weaves individual destinies into complex narratives. Places and people, cause and effect overlap when, for example, an oil refinery, a melting glacier and a self-portrait of the artist not only meet in a single composition, but intertwine like a web, permeating each other, disintegrating into fragments and recombining into something new. In her sometimes highly personal works, Driscoll combines not only drawing, collage and digital printing, but also her own experiences of health crisis and recovery with global developments in environmental crisis and the resilience of nature, from which hope ultimately emerges. The fate of the individual and of the whole world are here each other's mirror image, infinite and inseparable, forever intertwined, the same genesis from different perspectives.

More about the artist: Ellen Driscoll's artist page