Léna Lewis-King
︎Semper 4º
‘Semper 4º’ explores experiences of alienation related to migration and displacement through four looping scenarios: the astronaut floating in space, the satellite’s view of earth, the deep-sea diver on the ocean’s floor and a shifting series of doors and doorways. The title of the work connects to Gottfried Semper’s book ‘The Four Elements of Architecture’ and echos the Italian/Portuguese word ‘Sempre’.
The project began with the symbol of the doorway - representative of every passageway that an individual goes through within their lives architecturally and psychologically (doors to the subconscious or doorways as metaphors for birth and death). The two figures of the astronaut and the deep-sea diver are mirrors to one another, both individuals isolated by circumstance that exist on the fringes of what’s familiar (I also really like the dynamic of the phrase ‘as above so below’). The choice to use satellite imagery was both directly connected to the perspective of the astronaut looking down on earth and also inspired by the account @mappppamondo on Instagram, which lead me to scour and screenshot google earth as my aerial resource. The satellite’s sequence itself collages together geographically specific landscapes on a global scale: coastlines, cities, industry, agriculture and deserts.
The project began with the symbol of the doorway - representative of every passageway that an individual goes through within their lives architecturally and psychologically (doors to the subconscious or doorways as metaphors for birth and death). The two figures of the astronaut and the deep-sea diver are mirrors to one another, both individuals isolated by circumstance that exist on the fringes of what’s familiar (I also really like the dynamic of the phrase ‘as above so below’). The choice to use satellite imagery was both directly connected to the perspective of the astronaut looking down on earth and also inspired by the account @mappppamondo on Instagram, which lead me to scour and screenshot google earth as my aerial resource. The satellite’s sequence itself collages together geographically specific landscapes on a global scale: coastlines, cities, industry, agriculture and deserts.
About
Léna Lewis-King is an artist filmmaker whose work engages with everyday magical transformations emerging within the intersections between nature and technology. Her work is presented through the mediums of moving image, animation, photography, painting, digital drawing, and installation. Framing her perspective from a feminist viewpoint, she often features psychic and spiritual aspects of lived experience, as her films meditate on the impact techno-capitalist acceleration exerts upon ephemeral life and living in the world.
Her first short film Untitled Sequence was commissioned by Channel 4 Random Acts in 2016. Her recent film The Self Portrait (L’autoritratto) is currently available to watch on Google Arts and Culture/La Galleria Nazionale’s collaborative feminist archive (Women Up), and her latest film ‘The Copper Kings’, is available to watch on the Roundhouse website.
lenalewisking.com
instagram.com/lenalewisking
Léna Lewis-King is an artist filmmaker whose work engages with everyday magical transformations emerging within the intersections between nature and technology. Her work is presented through the mediums of moving image, animation, photography, painting, digital drawing, and installation. Framing her perspective from a feminist viewpoint, she often features psychic and spiritual aspects of lived experience, as her films meditate on the impact techno-capitalist acceleration exerts upon ephemeral life and living in the world.
Her first short film Untitled Sequence was commissioned by Channel 4 Random Acts in 2016. Her recent film The Self Portrait (L’autoritratto) is currently available to watch on Google Arts and Culture/La Galleria Nazionale’s collaborative feminist archive (Women Up), and her latest film ‘The Copper Kings’, is available to watch on the Roundhouse website.
lenalewisking.com
instagram.com/lenalewisking
