SOLO SHOW
Strangefield, Glasgow
2022BECOMING RED : Engaging with my own queerness in a body which is other, embracing the odd, the uncanny and the feeling of becoming other. The act of becoming Betty the Strawberry is the act of understanding my own queerness, understanding the issues Betty faces and what others see in them. It’s not easy being red, living life the colour of blood, it’s not easy being red it seems you don’t blend in with other ordinary things.
This exhibition explores Bry’s ongoing existence as her alter ego Betty the Strawberry, the childhood experiences and supermarket mascot that helped form Betty, and how these channel through Betty to depict Bry’s relationship with her own queerness and the body.
https://www.itiscabbage.com/elina-bry-becoming-red
As Betty, Bry explores how the tension between your physical and mental self is pulled farther apart when either experiences sickness or a change of state. Betty provides a vessel for exploring the body as a physical manifestation of being othered - by external sources for living as a queer body and resisting societal norms, as well as internally; othered by your own body and how you perceive yourself within it. Exhibited all together for the first time in Bry's first solo exhibition in the UK, Becoming Red presents an autobiographical archive of Betty the Strawberry, depicted through moving image, print, painting, and performance.
Text : Cabbage, Jenny Tipton
Exhibition photos : Sean Patrick Campbell
Opening photos : Alexis Galbrun-Thauré
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Founding Member:
Creative Recovery Inverclyde
Creative Degrowth Scotland
ELINA BRY is French/Finnish, Glasgow based multidisciplinary artist and award-winning filmmaker. They work across video, storytelling and live performance, and is interested at listening to and re-staging the malfunctions of the human body. They are curious about the body as a sentient arena; as a responsive tool and as a protagonist of an everyday drama. By that, they investigate the known, model it and work in collaboration with the instability of their body. It is essential that they don't cause any harm as they want to challenge their body with the everyday, in order to give a stage and witness what is already there.
The thematic undercurrents of ecology and slow travel prominently weave through their artistic endeavours. Through their multidisciplinary approach, they seek to unravel the nuanced interplay between the human form and its environment, exploring the intricacies of the body while maintaining a conscientious connection to ecological and sustainable principles.