Arteles Catalogue 2023-2020

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2022
Dora Lionstone
Germany
doralionstone.com
About
Dora Lionstone is a visual artist based in Amsterdam who
holds a BA in Photography and an Msc in Media Informatics.
Her work is driven by a fascination for ambiguity, logic and
the surreal. She challenges the clear-cut perception of reality
with multiple coexisting and often contradicting perspectives
while searching for deeper layers beyond the surface.
Influenced by her background in software engineering,
Lionstone sees the image as a system that is waiting to
be cracked, taken apart and reassembled differently. This
continuous (re-)construction of reality is explored by the
artist’s use of collages and other image transformations. Her
process involves a combination of various techniques such
as analog photography, digital manipulation and animation
next to the creation of objects, drawings and text. By using
multiple methods and points of view, she aims to extend the
boundaries of the rigid binary world, merging fact and fiction,
science and art.
Nachtluftschlösser
“One should not turn night into day,” my mother used to tell
me whenever I wanted to stay up late when I was younger. Her
words echoed in my mind as I spent countless long nights in
the Finnish landscape, photographing constructions I had
built during the day.
Prior to my time at Arteles I had a vivid dream about a
holographic house, in which I questioned the very existence
of reality. This served as a starting point for my project
‘Nachtluftschlösser’ (‘Castles in the night air’): I wanted to
recreate this haunting vision and its ephemeral quality. I built
sculptures out of transparent cubes, constructed various
temporary installations in the forest, and experimented with
projections and long exposures at night. The peaceful and
focussed atmosphere of Arteles and the mysterious darkness
of the countryside at night provided the ideal playground for
me to try out countless ideas that unfolded during my time
there. Cube by cube and night by night, my project developed
into a complex system of continuous reconstruction while
the vision from my dream became more and more elusive.
Maybe I was chasing the impossible dream of constructing
a non-existent house, but the experience within such an
inspiring environment and group of people has taught me
a lot about the appreciation for the process itself, about
thinking by making, testing my limits while accepting the
possibility of failing, and the beauty of the attempt.