SPACORE: wellness capitalism, horror medicine, and maintaining a body, with Serena JV Elston [S3E14]
Elle Billing hosts Serena JV Elston, a transdisciplinary sculptor and fellow recipient of the 2024 Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities. They dig into Serena’s curatorial project, SPACORE, which interrogates wellness capitalism within the horror genre. She mentions her upcoming solo show at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago, set to open July 2025, which explores the body's relationship to power structures through ecology, post-humanism, and disability.
Links to SPACORE, to connect with Serena, and all other resource links, are in the full show notes at hoorfpodcast.com
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Episode Resources
Serena JV Elston:
Website: https://serenajve.com/
Social media: https://www.instagram.com/serenajve
SPACORE: https://www.spacore.skin/
Sick Woman Theory: https://topicalcream.org/features/sick-woman-theory/
How to Tell When We Will Die, by Johanna Hedva*: https://bookshop.org/a/86292/9781638931164
Guest Spotlight: Serena JV Elston
color headshot: Serena JV Elston is a white woman in her 30s, with long brown hair. She is seated at a small table for a professional headshot, wearing a two-piece ultramarine blue linen suit, and looking directly at the camera. A small bunch of bright yellow daffodils sit in a small planter on the table, a striking contrast to her suit.
Serena JV Elston is a transdisciplinary sculptor contemplating the body and its relationship to structures of power. Her research based practice explores ecology, post humanism, disability and embodiment through a post colonial lens. At its core, her practice asks if an institution has the power to disable a body, does the body have the power to disable an institution? Serena's background in architecture and production has been instrumental in the creation of ambitious curatorial projects such as SPACORE, a platform centered around lived experiences within wellness and capitalism. Serena is one of the recipients of the 2024 Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities, and she lives in Chicago.
Connect with Serena:
Website: https://serenajve.com/
Social media: https://www.instagram.com/serenajve
See the transcript: pdf | webpage
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