Working primarily in photographic and audio-visual media, Eli Hooper is an artist currently exploring the limits of home as a physical space, the influence of digitality on memory and nostalgia, and world-building as a utopic process.
New Zealand-born and Rotterdam-based, Eli has a keen interest in how the cultural products we consume shape our experiences with the world, and what happens to our identities when these memories become intangible. Can a sense of shared, limitless belonging exist within nostalgia? Eli attempts to bring morsels from his own world to connect to those of others, finding unity in the realms between.
Beamers and Beer
Part of the group show, Beamers and Beer, in which members of C3 travelled to Roubaix for a showcase of work on multiple projectors
smaller works
Monochromatic inkjet transfers and experiments using online archival material within small form factors, exhibited for a month at Porfot, Rotterdam
76x32x32_200x85x360
76x32x32_200x85x360 was part of Rotterdam Art Week, and advertised itself as “the largest group show in the smallest art space”. VLAK’s first collective exhibition showed small-scale, never-shown-before works by 76 Rotterdam-based artists selected through an open call, presented together in a transparant display wall.
The Wings of Mechanical Doves
From the website:
The Wings of Mechanical Doves draws us into the layered memoryscape of Eli Hooper’s world — one that flickers between the physical and the rendered. Photographs line the windows like open browser tabs, glimpses into empty cities and forgotten corners. Inside, cyanotypes depicting video games and found photos exist as slower, softer relics touched by light and time, cultural products from Eli’s childhood.
Stormslag - The Way the Wind Blows
Part of a group show from a mobile gallery, Stormslag, I had the chance to exhibit new work from my project "The Wings of Mechanical Doves."
My bones break against blue borders - solo exhibition
my bones break against blue borders is a selection of images i've made over the last five years that try to portray notions of alienation, home, and nostalgia. How is the past remembered after being physically away from it? Home, for most, is no longer a physical space, as globalisation and the rising importance of digital communities are changing our true definitions of belonging. The exhibition was a chance to explore my own memories and relation to the manifestation of nostalgia in space.
ARCADIA, FL
Finding the red thread in one's life throughout the chaos of the world is, to put it simply, a difficult task; in a system that is so sporadic, ever shifting at the hands of political, societal, and personal change, it seems like any remaining strand of coherency is, in effect, “lost to the void.” Yet, the necessity to find this thread has occurred more and more often throughout my life and practice, and arcadia, FL is my own attempt to tune in and harness the hidden frequencies of order.