Ellen Sheidlin
- Anna Lilli Garai
- 31 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Ellen Sheidlin began with staged photography, building the scenes herself in front of the camera. Later she started painting and using other materials like digital drawing and installation, when she felt some ideas needed a more physical process. She has shown her work internationally and has spent time working in Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. These experiences became important to her artistic life and the way she approaches image-making. Her process is intuitive, and she chooses the medium based on the feeling of the idea.
In our interview, we talk about why she sometimes draws with her eyes closed, what Survirtualism means to her now, and how color became important in her recent exhibition Unconditional.
Q: You began with staged photography and over time added painting, sculpture and digital work. What made you want to expand your practice?
A: I’m always searching for the form that best embodies an idea — the kind of body it needs to live in. Photography was my first tool, a way to build entire worlds physically, without relying on collage or post-production. I’d construct them by hand, frame by frame. But over time, I found that some thoughts or sensations needed a different kind of language — one that could speak in color, texture, and spatial weight. Painting and sculpture allowed me to work more directly with material, to shape emotion with my hands.
Q: Early on you started using the word “Survirtualism” for your vision. What does it mean to you now?
A: For me, Survirtualism isn’t just an aesthetic category, but more of an attitude. It’s a way of seeing and feeling where reality, imagination, and the digital all coexist as equal visual spaces. I believe reality is fluid. The boundaries between the inner and outer world are constantly shifting. Through Survirtualism, I explore how internal states — dreams, memories, intuitions — can be projected to form a new kind of supra-reality, one that feels emotionally true, even if it’s visually uncanny.
Q: Your work mixes classical imagery, pop culture and technology. Where does a new idea usually begin for you?
A: With a feeling — always. Often it starts with a persistent image that won’t leave me, or a specific emotional temperature carried by color. Color is usually the first thing that arrives. It sets the atmosphere, like lighting in a theater. Then I start searching for a symbol, an object, or a form that can contain that emotion, hold it in place long enough for me to translate it. My process is intuitive and nonlinear.
Q: When you draw with your eyes closed, what do you pay attention to first?
A: Closing my eyes removes the pressure of getting it “right.” It disarms the critic and returns me to the body. This practice reminds me that imagination is not a visual archive, but a living force — it leads when I stop trying to control the outcome.
Q: In “Unconditional” your work took a more abstract turn. What led you there?
A: At some point, figuration began to feel too descriptive, too anchored in the literal. I needed a visual language that could hold contradiction, fragmentation, and ambiguity without resolving it. Abstraction helped me keep things personal without having to explain everything too directly.
Q: A lot of your images have a strange, disorienting atmosphere. What draws you to that feeling?
A: I’m more drawn to tension than to harmony. That space where beauty overlaps with discomfort — where the familiar begins to shift into something uncertain — feels more alive to me. I want the viewer to pause and question what they’re seeing. For me, disorientation isn’t chaos — it’s an invitation to an inner dialogue.
Q: Your time in Asia left a strong mark on your art. What from that period still shapes how you work today?
A: It taught me to slow down and listen. Japan and my first solo exhibition there shaped my sense of form and discipline, taught me to value simplicity and precision. In South Korea, working with ceramics deepened my connection to material and process. Thailand became a sacred place. Silence, ritual, and repetition shifted how I relate to material and space. Asia remains a deep and ongoing source of inspiration for me, and I’m truly grateful to be immersed in it.
Q: You have a huge audience online. How do you keep the creative process personal in the middle of that attention?
A: The studio is still my center, the most honest space I know. The online presence is real, and I value it, but it’s also a window. I decide when to open it, and how wide. I don’t create for an audience — I create alongside it. That relationship can be nourishing: the conversations, the shared emotional resonance — but the creative process itself always begins in solitude.
Q: You often reshape faces and identities in your portraits. What questions are behind that impulse?
A: Identity, to me, is fluid, a shifting constellation of selves, histories, desires. We’re never just one thing. When I distort or reshape faces, I’m exploring where the boundaries of the self begin to blur. How much of who we are is inherited, and how much is invented? What happens when the familiar becomes unfamiliar? The face becomes a site of transformation, a surface where the inner world breaks through. I’m interested in that instability — in how identity behaves under pressure, under imagination.
Q: Where do you see your work heading next?
A: This year, I’ve been deeply exploring color as a way to both express and recall emotional states. The first result of this exploration was the painting "July: Blue" (2025), which premiered this fall in Seoul. These months, I’ve been working on a new series of paintings for my upcoming solo exhibition in 2026. I’m also preparing a special project to be presented at Art Dubai 2026, along with a Christmas surprise for my global online audience which will be revealed soon.
