Artist Feature with Canadian based Artist Dessa Ely

Dessa Ely is a 17 year old artist based in Toronto, Canada and currently attending the contemporary arts program at Etobicoke School of the Arts, with an aim to hopefully going to an arts University when she graduates. Ely’s two primary mediums that she works with include chlorophyll prints and emulsion lifts, creating work about loss, healing and her individual experiences through time. When asked how Ely got into the creative arts industry she quoted; “Going to an arts high school definitely was a big motivator to take art-making more seriously. Etobicoke School of the Arts has a really incredible contemporary arts program that really focuses on teaching you how to be an artist. After attending there when I was 14, I started learning more and more about art, and what kind of role it could play in my life. Being surrounded by many other teenage artists is also really inspiring. Since my program is very individual based, everyone is always making entirely different work. Everyone inspires each other, which creates a really beautiful community that we’re all a part of. After I started taking art-making more seriously, I began to understand how my practice can benefit me in ways I didn't know art could do. I use art to process pieces of my life and understand myself as a person better, and art helps me find ways to connect to other people. This is really my true inspiration, to use art to understand and heal.” ‘Best friends’ is a set of chlorophyll prints from a series about capturing the universal experience of growing up. Our beings are made up of small pieces, and as time passes, some of those pieces are left behind. I am not the same as I was as a child, nor will I be the same when I am an adult. These losses define us, and through the deaths of parts of ourselves, we become new humans. This is a process I replicate in art. “The process I use to make chlorophyll prints uses sunlight to naturally bleach an image onto a living leaf. Parts of the leaf die while others live, creating a balance of life and death and eventually forming an image. In this specific work I explore the loss of a relationship I had as a child, and the type of hope that one feels as a child. I use art to process loss I experience, whether that be the loss of my childhood, people around me or places I’ve occupied. This allows me to turn loss into something beautiful, and learn to move on. Due to the nature of my materials, the work itself is alive, and will eventually die. It is a loss in itself, and its impermanence teaches me to appreciate what life currently holds, because nothing is permanent.” - Dessa Ely This balance of life and death creates a larger image, the same way parts of our identity are left behind, but are still with us in some way or another. Since I use life itself as a material, death is inevitable for my work. Eventually the work will decompose and return to the earth, and the work is impermanent. I use this to remind myself of the importance of letting go.