IN A RECENT EXHIBITION ORGANIZED BY THE ARTIST-CURATOR ELLA VERES, CREATIVITY ERUPTED WITH FUNGAL FURY

by Edward M. Gómez

The artist, writer, and performer Ella Veres, who also goes by the moniker “vermilion,” was born and brought up in Communist-controlled Romania, and immigrated to the United States in 1998. Having experienced many traumatic events over the course of her life’s journey, she long ago discovered solace — and the healing, liberating power of self-expression — in art, language, and the making of something fresh and compelling from observations of the world around her and, literally, of the debris and curiosities she finds in it.

Veres, who is based in New York, recently told me that, growing up in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918-1989), “Life was very hard for most people, who had very little of anything, and fear of the power of the state was the glue that held together a sick society; the whole population was psychologically, psychically ill.”