Joya: AiR / Nadya Eidelstein / Russia

photo Simon Beckmann

‘Being removed from the pressure to produce and present any outcome in the end, I was able to take time to listen to my intuition in order to understand which creative direction to take next when I am back from the residency. These two weeks were crucial for me to realise how much I used to be driven by my noisy rational mind in any creative pursuits. So I spent most of the studio time doing intuitive drawings with oil pastels listening to my body and being driven by inner impulses, dismissing any reasoning that came from my conscious mind. The process of making these drawings was very helpful for my creative self-liberation because I shifted my focus and put more value into the actual process rather than the outcome.

Every day I spent some time hiking, connecting with the unique environment and biodiversity of Sierra María-Los Vélez, meditating outside. I took the opportunity of being surrounded by so many plant species unknown to me to document the variety of shapes I found, so I can use this vocabulary of plant forms in my future projects.

Studio time and time spent in nature was of great healing importance to me but the interactions and conversations with people I met in Joya: AiR were equally transformative. Every dinner meal shared together was nourishing for the body and mind. Simon and Donna’s impressive efforts put into creating such a place and caring for the land made me expand my understanding of possible ways an artist can contribute to the restoration and healing of damaged and/or abandoned environments’.

Nadya Eidelstein www.nadyscreatures.com

Nadya Eidelstein is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Toronto, Canada. She received her BA from Central Saint Martins, London, UK. ​Since graduation she has been working on the border between machine-made and handmade approaches, trying to define what makes these ways of making different, how they are similar, and how to blur the definitions of man-made and computer-made.