Evelyn Bencicova – Symbolic Narratives
- Jonas
There’s something uncanny, highly contemporary about the aesthetic of Evelyn Bencicova’s work. In her interdisciplinary practice, the artist creates multidimensional worlds that blend personal questions with current topics around representation, technological development and philosophy. These, as she calls them, “symbolic narratives“ hit a nerve in a world whose visual culture and stimuli develop further and further from what one might consider “real“ and invites the viewer to dive into a web of visual and linguistic metaphors. Her signature style and way of working is not only applied in her personal artistic practice but also commissioned projects in the field of theatre, art, fashion and science.
Hi Evelyn, I discovered you as a photographer, but you do so much more – digital art, film, collaborations. How would you describe what you do?
I don’t like to define myself through these categories. What I’m doing is creating a narrative through visual images. This can be through photographs, performances, movement recorded on video, or 3D scenes. Often, it’s a combination of them while the basis of my projects lies in text and narrative thinking. My goal is less to tell a story in a classical sense and more about creating a symbolic narrative that responds to the topic I’m researching.
Could you elaborate on that? What do you mean by symbolic narratives?
It’s like building a world–a visual space. Similar to a theater play or staged film, where scenography provides the setting in which different scenes take place, and together, form a symbolic story that reflects a certain question or idea. I create a narrative setting and then capture it in fragments.
Do all projects belong to the same world?
No, each project is its own world. But all the projects together are my world in a way. Some of the projects reflect on similar topics, but in a different time of my life, consequently showing different stages of thought or development. When I’m in the middle of making a project, it’s often very hard for me to understand why I’m doing it. But when I look back, I can see very clearly what the need was, or what I was going through at that time.
Your artistic work usually involves very thought-out, philosophical concepts about the nature of machines and AI, female representation in the digital, or the Anthropocene. How do those ideas influence the project?
The beginning of a project is always very intuitive. Sometimes it’s a sudden moment where an idea appears – it can come from observation, from something that happens, or simply from a feeling. It’s like there’s an open door and something is calling me.
What follows is much more rational as I’m diving into theoretical research. I will read, look at other works on the topic, visit places, and search for articles or interviews. I try to be in the topic physically and mentally.
Then there’s a phase where I start forming my own position. In my recent projects, this is closely connected to writing. This helps me connect intuition and knowledge, and to find my own interpretation. I don’t consider myself a writer, but I like including text in my work because I feel that it’s the medium where I can be the most honest and also the least limited.
Then there’s the question of translation: how do I translate all of this into images? I spend a lot of time thinking about the core idea and how to visually grasp something that I – and others – are feeling about a topic. There’s a lot of questioning, a lot of going back and forth. It’s not a linear process.
Your personal work sometimes feels almost activist, in the sense that you raise questions about the future, highlight challenges or show that something is going the wrong way. Is there something you want to achieve with your artworks?
I’m trying to engage with topics that are important for me, but I’m not interested in judging if something is good or bad. I’m more interested in posing questions, in showing something and allowing viewers to see it through their own eyes. I would say the work should function as a conversation starter – or rather, a contemplation starter. This is especially true for my more narrative works, like VR experiences or videos. With photography, it’s different, because an image can be seen in isolation and then take on a completely different meaning. Even in exhibitions, I find it difficult to fully control how a story is constructed through the order of photographs. That’s one of the reasons I started working with video and VR as I felt the need for a clearer narrative structure.
Nevertheless, the works are still very open-ended. I don’t want them to be intellectual in an exclusive way. It’s more important to me that that there’s enough space to simply think and feel.
The mission statement on your website places your work “between the real and the hyperreal“. At first, I wanted to ask you what “the hyperreal” means to you, but given that you are familiar with Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality and his idea of “sign value“, I think the more interesting question is what “the real“ means to you?
In my work, I’m often trying to grasp something very abstract. Through research, I look for ways these things manifest – in habits, actions or media. I ask myself: How is this feeling I have – this atmosphere that surrounds me – actually experienced? And as I said, it’s like creating a theater scene and thinking about every element in order to represent that feeling. Therefore, I often work with symbols. Props are never just something a person happens to interact with. I think about why and how they are interacting, and why they appear in this specific setting. So reality exists through the concrete tools I use to grasp something that belongs to a more abstract world of thought.
This question runs through many of my projects: how ideology, belief systems, or ideas translate into something tangible – for example into architecture, or how we move through spaces. In the project Asymptote, for instance, I was looking at how the former political regime of Slovakia, my country of origin, manifests in buildings of that time. In SimulacRaum I explore how logics of growth and destruction translate into spaces. This exchange – between ideas and material forms – is present in almost all the topics I’m interested in.
So it’s about looking behind the signs? For example through architecture, you can look at a regime?
Exactly. And the ideas behind it–how it wants people to behave. All spaces, and all choices of props, are eventually some kind of signs that represent something much bigger. But I don’t need the viewer to understand all the philosophical references that inform my work. It’s something that will be felt if it’s done right.
Take, for example, our film Æther O (created with Samson G Balfour Smith), which is a retranslation of the Genesis story. The text of the work deals with the possible different meanings of the words, changing the cautionary tale of sin and shame into a journey of reaching self-awareness through consciousness. Perceived as voice over, the text is built on nuances and details which can be easily missed or even misunderstood. Nevertheless, through the work’s visuals, its signs, it will be understood. That’s something I really like about working with 3D animations. I feel like in the 3D space you can work with so much freedom. You can really control every shape and therefore its perception. I have to add that I’m not a 3D artist though. Those works always happen in collaboration, like in this case with Samson, who also worked on the sound of the piece.
I see a lot of doubt towards technological advancements in your work but at the same time your aesthetic can feel like a futuristic dream. Do you see this as a contradiction?
I don’t doubt the technology itself; I doubt its design and impacts. For example, my project Artificial Tears and its continuation Second Virgin question how AI tools are created and programmed, and what stereotypes their development enforces.
The work Anti-Atlantis is about an environmental catastrophe, but the focus lies more on the topic of consumption than on the use of technology itself.
Can you tell me more about your ongoing project Second Virgin and its predecessor Artificial Tears?
Artificial Tears is one of my earliest projects. It really just started from instinct eight years ago as a photo project, at a time when artificial intelligence was just beginning to enter our lives. I was not thinking about AI directly, but rather about this feeling of repeating certain actions, behaving according to other people’s expectations, or dressing according to mannequins in shop windows. I found that quite absurd. So I started taking photographs in which gestures or poses are repeated or imitated. For me, the project was about the difference between humans and machines, between independent thinking and imitation, our fear of advancing technology, and how we ourselves are becoming more mechanical.
A few years later, I had the opportunity to show the project at Kraftwerk Berlin. When I looked at it again, I felt that something was missing. The series’ character was supposed to be this being “between human and machine“ and I realized I had made her female without thinking about it. It felt just natural at the time – maybe because I’m female myself, and most of the characters I work with as well. But at the same time, within this context, it felt problematic.
I remembered hearing a really great lecture at the Chaos Communication Congress on AI voice assistants and how the notion of the female machine has long been present in literature and cinema, and I realized that I was repeating this trope myself: showing a female character engaged in domestic tasks, photographing herself, looking into mirrors — very stereotypical images.
So I decided to expand it and started working on a VR piece. I wanted to give this character a voice. I wanted her to question issues like the power of looking, the power of capturing images – things that are also closely connected to photography itself. I went deeper into research, looking at Alan Turing, at the difference between thinking and imitation, and at how AI voice assistants like Siri or Alexa are programmed – and what kinds of stereotypes are embedded in that programming. When I returned to the images after doing this research, I suddenly saw many things that I hadn’t fully noticed before.
And what made you start Second Virgin?
The VR part of Artificial Tears was finished in 2019. Since then, technology has developed so rapidly that I felt the need to continue, but from a different angle. Whereas Artificial Tears focused more on domestic helpers, I’m now looking more closely at AI companions and robotic sex workers. It is interesting to me how gender translates to AI. So I’m looking at the objectification of bodies, emotions, and also ourselves. All of these things are really becoming part of our everyday reality. To what point are you yourself a tool, a project or a customer? It’s a big question for me.
How did you come up with the name?
All of my titles are really intuitive. I’m usually not actively searching, but the name takes shape in the process of making.
In this case, I was saying to someone that there’s a “second version“ and they understood “Second Virgin“. I found that name really interesting because the whole project is very connected to intimacy and value. Second Virgin sounds impossible at first, but then in the digital world, we are constantly going away from the limitations of the actual body. However, many possibilities created in the field of digital intimacy are far from consensual or ethical. I reflect on that in the work, and I feel like that title already signifies it. It brings an image, yet a very unclear one.
Furthermore, I’m in a queer relationship, and it has really changed me – my view on my body, intimacy, the bodies of other people and the whole economy of comparison and judgement. I realized only recently that it’s almost seeing things, including myself, and my past experiences through new eyes, like taking another perspective. So the title Second Virgin is also something really personal, as I’m kind of experiencing intimacy and life through a different lens. For some time, I wasn’t sure why I needed to deal with those topics right now. It’s a really big topic in society but why is it so important for me? Maybe that’s the reason.
Does it often happen that, through your art, in retrospect, you realize something about yourself?
It’s insane. I sometimes feel like if I didn’t do the work, I would not solve or explore enough of the things I’m going through. I think that’s why the inner need to do my personal projects is so strong.
Are you a spiritual person?
Doing my projects definitely can feel like a spiritual practice – when I’m really immersed in the work, it feels like I’m taking from something that’s bigger than me, as if I’m outside of my rational self.
It’s a spirituality that is more about getting to know yourself than thinking there’s a higher being or anything like that?
In some stages of my process, it can really feel like there are signs I’m listening to. For example, in both films of Æther, many elements appeared to me in a dream. Or I would go to certain places and write there, really trying to focus on where I am and on what the places bring to me.
Dreams are especially important to me. It may not necessarily always be a scene – sometimes it’s a feeling that comes to me – but if anything arrives, I always know that it’s very valuable. So I’m open to receiving those signs but at the same time there’s the theoretical basis of my research and my own experience – all that goes together.
Generally, my view on spirituality is very open while I actually question religion in a lot of my projects. Æther, for example, is all about questioning religion but at the same time embracing belief.
Your work often feels dark to me, but there’s also a certain beauty to it. How do you feel about this connection of darkness and beauty?
What do you mean by dark?
For me, it can have an almost dangerous quality.
Now I know what you mean, but for me it’s not like that. I feel like my work is very symbolic – everything belongs to this symbolic language. And this has a certain aesthetic, which could be described as dark. However, things that I find dark in an evil sense are not at all connected to aesthetics – they could have fluorescent colours, for all I know.
I came up with this question while looking at your project SimulacRaum. It features botanic gardens which are beautiful at first sight but at the same time your images really highlight how nature is being “enslaved” in such places.
What intrigues me is the unknown – things that I’m curious about. So my work in a way serves as a tool to understand why something fascinates me. SimulacRaum started with me discovering a quarry in the south of France. Since then, I’ve been visiting quarries whenever I’m close to one while travelling. There’s something incredibly powerful about these places. Our mind can’t really grasp the masses that are in play there. Being there feels dangerous: heavy machinery, loud noises – you’re left with a feeling of vertigo. In almost every quarry there are architectural structures which are directly cut into the rocks – roads, entries or tables. This feels almost ritualistic, like in a church. At the same time, these structures can only be used for a certain time. When abandoned, they become these beautiful places, full of water, plants and animals. It’s very interesting to see how nature takes it back.
Around the same time I started going to botanical gardens, which really are quite the opposite. Even though you are in the middle of the city, you feel like you’re in the jungle. But then I started to notice how artificial they actually are. There are speakers playing insect sounds, the climate is perfectly controlled, and some trees are just painted structures.
For me, these two places – one of extraction, one of recreation – somehow relate to each other. The images never show people, only signs of human activity or purpose – they’re a SimulacRaum.
I really would love to do a book on this topic and include essays by other people. Compared to my other projects, this topic isn’t as personal – or rather I did not discover its personal layer yet. It’s just something that really fascinates me and that I want to understand better, and which persists as the project is still ongoing.
I also wanted to touch on your commissioned projects. Their aesthetic seems very closely related to your personal artistic works. How far would you say your own vision finds its way into those projects?
Although those projects are always commissions and happen in collaboration with a team, nowadays I make most decisions myself. That’s why they feel close to my personal work. What’s different is that, since there are clear deadlines, the process is much more straightforward.
This is something I’m quite experienced in, as my way into photography was through doing commission work. I only later studied Fine Arts and learned that what I had previously considered a hobby – meaning my personal projects – could be an actual art-practice. So collaborating and working in a team feels very natural to me. This also helps me in personal projects, where I often work closely with others.
I guess as you are getting more well-known, clients book you for what you stand for and the style you represent?
Yes, but it’s not only that the client chooses me, I’m also trying to select clients whose values and practices I resonate with. I work with institutions like Kunsthalle Basel, the Institute of Molecular Biology in Austria, Staatsballet Berlin, and other organizations from the cultural sphere. The world of ballet, opera, and theatre hugely inspires me, while collaborating with scientists offers a great opportunity and a challenge to make complex topics more accessible through images. Being commissioned by art institutions and fellow artists is a great honour and learning experience for me. In general, I feel grateful to be part of any of these worlds through my practice.
Some projects also offer more freedom than others. For example, I don’t do so many fashion editorials but when I do, I try to think about what I want to say to the audience that reads the magazine. How can I use this space to tell a story that goes beyond clothes. For instance, I did a project for the Slovakian magazine LÁV. The idea came to me when I was at a train station, speaking to a homeless person. I asked him what was the most difficult about being homeless. His answer surprised me deeply. He said: “Feeling like a ghost. I’m on the street and people just act as if I don’t exist“.
So when the magazine approached me for a fashion editorial, I wanted to reflect on this encounter. We connected with a homeless shelter and invited people who were interested to share their stories with the public to model for the editorial. They were paid, got a haircut, could keep the clothes which they also selected themselves, and appeared in the magazine. They were also interviewed for the issue, but the article and interviews appeared only at the end of the magazine, so when looking at the photos, they were not identifiable as homeless – simply beautiful-looking individuals who feel strangely familiar.
For the promotional campaign, we went around the city asking people “Do you recognize this woman?“ They would say “Yeah, I recognize her. She’s an actress or TV personality. I know her face, but I just can’t place her.“ What they didn’t realize was that they knew her because she sells the street newspaper on the main square, and they probably pass her every day, without fully noticing her. They know her face, but they have never acknowledged the person behind it. This is an example of how I try to deal with a topic I think is important when doing editorials.
Natalia Evelyn Bencicova (b. Bratislava, 1992) is a visual artist based in Berlin. Her multi-platform work has been exhibited internationally, in solo and group shows, including the Slovak National Gallery, Istanbul Archeology Museum, National Portrait Gallery in London, EMST Athens, Fotografiska Global, Museumsquartier Vienna, Kunsthalle Bratislava, HAU, Haus am Lützowplatz, Fundación Medianoche, Kraftwerk, Berghain Halle, and more.
She is the recipient of several awards, including the Hasselblad Masters, Berlin Masters, Prix Picto de La Photographie, and VR Kunstpreis, as well as nominations for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, Czech Grand Design, J.P. Morgan Highlights at Photo Paris, and the Nikon Prize at Photo London.
Evelyn’s artistic and commissioned projects have been featured in ZEIT Wissen, Flash Art, Tagesspiegel, Dazed Beauty, i-D, Vice Italy, Frieze, Vogue, Numeró, Modern Weekly China, Fräulein, ELLE, Kinfolk, The Opéra, Metal, CAP 74024, and other notable publications.
Her cultural clientele encompasses Frieze, Kunsthalle Basel, Staatsballett Berlin, Royal Opera House London, Slovak National Theatre, National Theatre Prague, the Institute of Molecular Biology in Austria, as well as Dior, Gucci, Cartier, Nehera, and Trippen.