Ella Yolande
Ella Yolande, We Have Never Been Only Human, 2023, Film Still, Courtesy: Ella Yolande
Ella Yolande is a London-based artist who is currently studying towards an MA Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths University (London, UK) and in 2019 she completed a BA(Hons) in Intermedia at Edinburgh College of Art (Scotland).
Her practice is rooted in tangled thoughts about the vegetal, wildness, seeds and what she describes as “our messy, multi-species bodies”. Her work is additionally informed by queer ecologies, ideas of resilience, preservation and the more-than-human.
She works across video, 3D animation, sculpture and textiles, with reference to fieldwork, botanical architecture and protective wear. Through her work she considers the history and medicinal properties of plants, as well as the need for mutual flourishing.
For Coventry Biennial 2025 she has reworked an older project that she made in collaboration with Zara Sands.
Their work together focused on exploring body-environment binaries through the lens of queer ecology, and how colonial botanical science practices feed into the continued stratification of bodies and lifeforms. Human bio banks and seed banks become speculative sites to explore preservation, mutuality, categorisation and the problems of body /environment binaries.
This reworked presentation at The Coach House additionally references the nursery and seed business that John Whittingham and his son Charles ran while they leased the Charterhouse between 1745 and 1803.
During Coventry Biennial 2023 we presented a one-off screening of a moving image work by Ella and we’re pleased to be able to continue our relationship with her and to support the development of her research Ella’s past exhibitions have taken place at venues including Lewisham Arthouse (London, UK), Pilot Ima (Riga, Latvia) and Melkweg Expo (Amsterdam, The Netherlands).
