RE-OCCURRING NIGHTMARE Sculpture

Holly Silius is a British born multidisciplinary visual artist of Lithuanian descent and BA Hons London College of Fashion educated SFX make-up artist based between Los Angeles and Europe. With a career spanning over two decades working with some of the most sought after models, celebrities and public figures as a makeup artist and multidisciplinary visual artist working across body casting, wearable art, photography and mask making, Silius is one of the most forward thinking names pushing the boundaries of contemporary wearable art. Silius also utilised her training in SFX by working in film & TV as well as Royal Opera House in London. Holly Silius’ work responds to traditional, restricted representations of the human body from European art history. For Silius, subverting these ideals is the essence of her practice. Silius’ body of work explores the human form, both raw and adorned, from body cast stone sculptures to masks and wearable body jewellery. The duality of raw and adorned mirrors Silius’ background in fine art and SFX. Her art practice finds its inspiration from the study of morphology and the wider body of her work centres around her fascination with the human body and the way it serves as a canvas for experimentation. The body casts, wearable art and masks created by Silius present a futuristic intervention on the formal presentation of art, using the human body as an experimental frame for Silius’ art. Having initially trained as a competitive swimmer in the UK, the artist’s interest in anthropomorphism and natural forms can be traced back to her early age. Movement and body remain at the core of Silius’ practice as she carefully threads the path between art, design and fashion through her wearable and non-wearable body pieces, busts and masks that explore the relationship between our materiality and our self. In 2021 Silius produced series of bodycasts in collaboration with gender queer actor and writer Lio Mehiel, inspired by their top surgery. The evocative bodycasts and photo series titled Phantom Feel explored and reimagined traditional figurative sculpture through a lens of gender-queer and transmasculine body. The series was chosen for a major public art exhibition PATRIARCHY RIP curated by Save Art Space and Pussy Riot across 9 states in the US. Silius’ series received critical acclaim across key international arts and mainstream media including The Art Newspaper, artnet, Al Jazeera, Dazed and FAD Magazine amongst others.