Daria Blum’s art star has been rising since her graduation from RA schools in 2023. In this solo show brilliantly titled Drip Drip Point Warp Spin Buckle Rot at Claridge’s Art Space, she develops her well-honed performance practice into a slick installation well worth a visit.

Blum won the inaugural £30,000 Claridges RA Schools prize selected by judges Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA and Eva Rothschild RA. The prestigious award was presented by performance artist Marina Abramović and introduced by actor, author and co-host of Talk Art Russell Tovey at Claridge’s last September.

This impressive site-specific installation in the subterranean Mayfair space evolves the artist’s research into the relationship between physical space and muscle memory, choreography and embodiment, and notions of institutional power in relation to dance and architecture, influenced by her own background as a ballet dancer.

A central three-channel video work follows Blum’s fictional character as she moves through rooms and corridors of a deserted 1970’s office building and discovers a collection of documentation and ephemera including portraits of her late grandmother Ukrainian ballerina/choreographer Daria Nyzankiwska, archival recordings of dance rehearsals and footage of a 2022 performance by Blum herself. Through a series of live performances, the artist further inhabits a live character who “disrupts and criticises, pointing fingers at the bodies on-screen and the voices offstage”.

Blum’s multi-layered, constellatory work blends pop and classical in referencing both the online circulation of popular dance trends and influential theorists such as Arabella Stanger and Beatriz Colomina whose sociopolitical assessments track gender, violence, and power across bodies, dance and architecture.

The artist discusses classical dance as an ‘archaeological site’, and questions what it means to re-perform choreographies that contain a range of misogynistic and colonial tropes, including how French ideals inspired Imperial Russia and in mapping her family tree tracks how choreography “travelled via bodies across state lines”. One to watch, this will no doubt be the first of many solo presentations by this thoughtful and captivating artist.

Claridge’s ArtSpace Café
Brook’s Mews London,
W1K 4DY

Monday – Friday: 8am – 6pm
Saturday & Sunday: 10am – 5pm
Admission to the exhibition is free.

Tags: claridges, claridges artspace, Daria Blum, exhibition, London Exhibition