Lizzy Deacon and Ika Schwander (both b.1999), are an artist duo based between London and Amsterdam. They work with performance, video and drawing. Deacon and Schwander’s work references the fragility of the influencer-capitalism aspirational model and how it is prone to obsessions, compulsions and neuroses. How, ultimately, beneath the glossy veneer of leisure and luxury, there is a specific abandonment in digital labour, that commodifying the self as content is an exhausting and void exercise. Improvisation, humour, and movement are central to their practice and their highly collaborative ethos enables conceptual and aesthetic risks. Recent shows include: 243 Luz (Margate), Frascati (Amsterdam), The Millennium Film Workshop (New York), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), The 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival (Michigan), Associação Audio-Visual CUT (Macau), Indie Lisboa International Film Festival (Lisbon), LUX Moving Image (London), Marres (Maastricht), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Circus Circus (Las Vegas). They have been awarded The Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for an Emerging Experimental Artist at 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Zubroffka Award, The Goldsmiths Research Bursary, as well as residencies at De Ateliers (Amsterdam), Open School East (Margate), and The High House (Norfolk).
- Artist