Led by Emily Elloway Walters and Eden Szymura, MEDUSA is a London-based arts collective catalysing conversation on feminism and connection as a means to practise radical care. Striving to reimagine through writing, curation and participatory practices, the pair critically examine culture surrounding the female experience. Their work unpicks mythmaking, psychosomatic interactions, and semiotics, drawing on Medusa as a figurehead for reclamation and rebirth.
EDEN SZYMURA
Eden Szymura is a writer whose work interrogates the relationship between women, desire and bodily sensation. Her work sits broadly in experimental prose and is heavily influenced by visual art.
Cutting her teeth on Angela Carter’s explosive subversions of sexuality, Eden has since moved away from researching patriarchal discourse on women’s bodies, and towards the internal, socialised, voices and complex physical sensations that sit underneath. She asks how women and people of marginalised genders speak within and outside.
Alongside working on MEDUSA, Eden regularly publishes an experimental newsletter / journal called ‘Yearning’.
Eden holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature from Durham University and an MA in Creative Writing (New Prose Narratives) at Royal Holloway. She has four years experience working in social impact and cultural communications.
Core research interests include: feminist conceptions of writing the self, the articulation of somatic experiences, cultural capital and internet culture.
You can keep abreast of her plans on her newsletter, Yearning.
EMILY ELLOWAY WALTERS
Fascinated by the intersections of art and activism, cultural memory and curation, Emily Elloway Walters is a linguist, writer and editor. Having studied German, French and Visual Culture whilst working in creative events management, much of her writing is centred on identity, connection and the arts.
Amongst other recent work, she has reviewed the RA’s Summer Exhibition and Elisa Shua Dusapin’s ‘The Pachinko Parlour’ for Lucy Writers. Her essay on the interplay of censorship, feminine agency and the art of protest within Ireland’s Referendum to Repeal the Eighth Amendment was published in the Centre for Visual Arts and Culture Journal.
As part of her MA she discovered her love of curation – interning at mima during their preparations for Fragile Earth, an exhibition on ecology and the urgent, collective need to protect our planet, as well as co-curating Time, Perception, Environment, an exploration of slowness through Durham University’s art collection.
From her perspective, the core of feminism is advocating equality, speaking out against injustice and dismantling oppressive structures of power. Incited by Cixous’ vision, she hopes for MEDUSA to be an inclusive, creative space, always seeking to encompass a plurality of perspectives.
Featured artwork: Apollo and Daphne, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1625
MEDUSA 