10 - 14 July 2023

Leith School of Art, 25 North Junction Street, Edinburgh, EH6 6HW

In Artist’s own words

I am deeply curious about the concept of the creative flow state. By combining both research and hands-on studio experimentation, I’ve been exploring what happens to me during the creative process. Through this exploration, I aimed to define and capture the essence of the state of flow. Additionally, I facilitate regular individual and group creative sessions, which have provided me with the opportunity to engage with participants about their own experiences—what they see, hear, or feel when they allow themselves the time and space to be creative.

This project was Alena’s attempt to visualise different moments of a creative journey such as an initial block to start making artwork, the difficulty to link creative vision with material reality, fragility to feedback, learning to balance between priorities and possibilities, confusion, creative sparks, and spin-outs, time constraints and moments of letting go of control. Materials for the artwork were part of the artistic discovery so they were chosen with the aim to specifically avoid typical art shops but rather explore less obvious spaces such as a building store, a friend’s garage, a scrap yard, or the back side of a holiday resort.

Medium: Abandoned glass, hammer, concrete block, wire, sand brought from Egypt.

The installation was complemented by a series of digital prints The Codes of Creativity created from manipulated photographs of the wire flow.