Artist's Statement
"There are elements of folk and carnival art in my practice - echoes of my fierce, rural upbringing. I am interested in migration and displacement and its effects on perception, the self and also on the landscape; how an individual becomes the product of cultural crossbreeding through their 'journeys' and what kind of objects and artworks are produced by such cultural influences.

The works shown in the exhibition 'I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night' complete silkscreen fragments from the western cultural canon with work in my own hand. Rather than attempt to unify stylistically my contributions with the canon, I exaggerate the gulf between the two.

My punk scrawls here are in concert with the labour intense designs. This arranged marriage of style reflects cultural differences that exist within society. It is informed by my own experience immigration, attempt to fit in, create connection with a history that we have nothing to do with.

My believe is that historical baggage is oppressively weighty whatever your relation to it. The force of objective culture works against spontaneity in artistic creation. The over-emphasised 'primitiveness' of my drawings marks an effort to overcome this force, while recognising the tension implicit in the competition and directness of expression."

Press for Eva Lis

Roundup #10: The Best Artists This Week on artreview.com
Posted by artreview.com on 12 June 2008 at 1:00pm

This text is abridged, for full article, click here

Our guest critic, the independent curator, critic and regular reviewer for ArtReview magazine, Laura McLean-Ferris continues her selections of outstanding artists on artreview.com.

Anonymity. There's not a lot of it about. We're in the grip of a high-visibility period when it comes to culture and personality. MySpace, Facebook, Heat magazine… On artreview.com most members have little avatars – a photo of a face (your face?) or an abstract image, or did someone perhaps catch you at an arty party?

However, we have – literally and metaphorically – all seen up Britney and Lindsay's skirts by now, and it only follows in the cultural push-pull that there will inevitably be a backlash to this trajectory. Post-Basel, with all that exhausting 'face-time', it's time to take a trip in the other direction. So hide your faces and come with me in search of anonymity: after all, you wouldn't want to get papped looking like that would you?

Eva Lis uses an extremely economic style of line drawing that gives faces anonymity by reducing them to basic features. These drawings look like they’re traced from photographs – either from newspapers, or a personal archive.

Lis, whose other projects include travelling around the M25 London orbital in a reflective black wagon drawn by a gypsy-like pony, explains on her website how her experience as an immigrant has been a 'ghost-life', fuelled by dreams, and the title of this work, together with the headless, mannequin-like figures, certainly conveys a sense that one's identity is lost in this process.

The particular can be found through the universal, and vice versa, and this image, entitled TEAM, looks exactly like one that can be found on my brother's wall at home. And probably your brother's. Or yours, a friend's, cousin's, or boyfriend's, as each member and each face is interchangeable with any member of a group of boys: a football team, a group of friends, a university or school photo. A pro-forma, identikit model for male sociality, if you like.

Laura McLean-Ferris is an independent curator and critic, and a regular contributor to ArtReview magazine.