Biograghy

Ellen Gilbert is a crip multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and digital wellbeing practitioner whose work explores how technology shapes human perception, behaviour, identity, and collective experience. Rooted in cyberpsychology, her practice examines the emotional, social, and spiritual consequences of living within digitally mediated systems. Working across moving image, installation, photographic performance, writing, and participatory formats, she creates speculative narratives and immersive environments that question the future of humanity in an increasingly technologised world.

Gilbert holds an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London (2024), completed a Junior Fellowship on the MFA Fine Art programme (2025), and worked as a Research Assistant to the Co-Directors of the Goldsmiths Drawing Centre for Humans and Machines (2026). Her work has been exhibited across the UK, Europe, and the US, and presented at international exhibitions, events, and conferences engaging with the ethics, politics, and aesthetics of emerging technologies.

Alongside her artistic practice, Gilbert develops workshops, talks, and interdisciplinary learning experiences focused on digital wellbeing, consciousness, and embodied approaches to technology. She is co-founder of the Techgnosis Collective, an international interdisciplinary initiative exploring the relationship between digital technology, spirituality, ecology, and the human experience in a more-than-human world.

Current

  • Future Digital Wellness Village is an immersive creative project where pupils from visiting schools in the lewisham area of south london step into the role of Architects of the Future, exploring how humans and technology might live well together.

    Across three sessions, pupils investigate five core themes of digital wellbeing, the brain, body, creativity, relationships, and the planet through art, collaboration, and speculative thinking. Drawing inspiration from the dystopian digital worlds of Lawrence Lek from the current exhibition ‘Life after Automation’ and the radical optimism from the book ‘From What Is to What If - Unleashing the power of Imagination to Create a Future We Want’ by environmentalist Rob Hopkins, the project shifts from “what’s going wrong” to “what could be possible.”

    Working in small teams, pupils research, imagine, and build geodesic Digital Wellness Pods sculptural spaces that visualise healthier, more balanced digital futures. These pods come together as a collective Future Digital Wellness Village, forming a temporary installation and shared vision for technology that supports focus, creativity, empathy, and care.

    Part art installation, part future lab, and part wellbeing experiment, Future Digital Wellness Village invites young people to question the digital systems around them and to imagine new ones, on their own terms.

Exhibtions

  • Digital Wellbeing Helpdesk: Digital Wellness Center, Next Nature Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2025)

    As an artist and digital wellbeing specialist, I collaborated with Prof. Matthew Dennis on the development of the Digital Wellbeing Helpdesk, an integral part of the Digital Wellness Center exhibition. Conceived as a conceptual and experiential interface, the Helpdesk supports visitors in pausing, assessing, and renegotiating their relationship with the digital world.

    My contribution spanned project design, research, and the development of supporting materials, including the conceptual foundations for the Helpdesk’s book collection and reflective resources. Bringing together digital wellbeing research, behavioural science, and artistic thinking, I helped shape the language, structure, and ensuring that the Helpdesk functions not simply as an informational point, but as an artistic intervention that renders the invisible architectures of digital life visible, felt, and open to dialogue.

  • Symbiotic Epidermis was a group exhibition at Grey Cube Projects exploring the intersections between bodies, environments, and technology. Bringing together international artists, the show investigated ideas of hybrid embodiment, porous boundaries, and the evolving relations between human and non-human systems.

  • A hybrid experimental-film event combining film screenings, gallery installation, performance, poetry reading and a limited-edition zine. The programme investigated the notion of the “digital body,” exploring how identity, memory and embodiment shift at the intersection of technology, flesh, and perception.

  • Together at the Seams was a group exhibition bringing together seven international artists from the UK, US, and Canada. The show explored themes of repair, collective healing, and reinvention in response to social, technological, and ecological disruption. Works in the exhibition addressed tensions between individual and collective agency, past and future, human and machine, urban and natural spaces, offering a vision of renewal, memory, and transformation through multidisciplinary practices.

  • The exhibition explored how artistic practices can illuminate the profound influence of new and emerging technologies on contemporary life. Against a backdrop of rapid technological disruption, the show examined how innovations reshape self-perception, communication, our relationship with nature, and our encounters with the wider world. Presented as part of the ESDiT conference on ethics and technology, the exhibition offered a reflective, sensory counterpart to the academic programme, inviting visitors to consider how technological change continually redefines both individual and collective experience.

  • Exhibited Freedom to Think, an immersive installation that transforms a futuristic “human data bank” into a site of reflection on digital autonomy, surveillance culture, and the erosion of inner life. The work combined multi-channel video, performative self-recordings, and an architectural pod structure to evoke a world in which individuals sleep, work, and dream inside isolated data chambers.

    Inside the pod, anti-surveillance makeup, handwritten provocations, and repeated gestures revealed the psychological conditions of a life lived under constant digital extraction. The performance culminated in the washing away of the makeup, a symbolic act of reclaiming humanity, intuition, and inner freedom.

    The installation invited viewers to consider how technology shapes thought, behaviour, and identity, and posed a central question: What is the future of digital well-being?

  • Performed a lecture-performance with meditative writing as part of HYPHA FIXED – Phantom Arena, curated by Kiik Amor. Reading from Mindy Seu’s Cyberfeminism Index, I delivered the text in a rhythmic, intentional manner that echoed the cadence of ritual and invocation. As I read, I slowly inscribed selected lines onto a sculptural form, allowing the act of writing to become a contemplative extension of the voice. The performance explored cyberfeminism as an embodied and reflective practice, merging theory, gesture, and presence.

  • Presented by Hypha Studios during Frieze Week 2022, this exhibition occupied a central London space at 56 Conduit Street, W1. The show assembled a diverse group of artists previously supported by Hypha Studios from across the UK, transforming an otherwise vacant high-street unit into a vibrant, temporary creative hub. hyphastudios.com

    The project exemplified Hypha’s mission to regenerate empty urban spaces by offering free exhibition platforms to artists, while engaging the public and local community with contemporary art and cultural exchange.

  • Present Tense was a group exhibition of recent and international graduates from the Masters in Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, University of London. The show spanned a variety of media and works, and aimed to reflect contemporary art-making across shifting historical, social and cultural contexts under the umbrella of Deptford X.

  • A group exhibition set within the atmospheric Lumen Crypt Gallery, bringing together emerging artists whose practices explored themes of care, labour, material histories, and the hidden processes beneath the surface of everyday life. The show juxtaposed intimate gestures with deeper excavations, both literal and metaphorical, inviting viewers to consider how acts of tending, revealing, and unearthing shape contemporary artistic practice.

  • An exhibition by the Futures_after collective, staged in a former retail space on Catford High Street, bringing together some 40 local and international artists. The show used performances, participatory practices, film and installations to reflect on what “value exchange” means in today’s high streets, and to re-imagine our economic, ecological, and social relationships during a time of widespread cultural and structural change. The project embraced the former shop as a site for exchange, dialogue, and alternative imaginaries about community, belonging, and future economies.

  • On Hold was a group exhibition curated by MFA Fine Art students in solidarity with the ongoing strike action at Goldsmiths, University of London. In response to several months of paused teaching, students self-organised a parallel programme of exhibitions, crits, and peer-led learning. The show embodied a collective act of resistance and resourcefulness, foregrounding autonomy, mutual support, and the creation of alternative structures for artistic education during institutional disruption.

  • Group show at Hastings Arts Forum of Selected Rising Talent Winners for new and emerging artists.

  • Online group exhibtion curated by Carola Dixon

    Press release

  • Rising Talent’ is a yearly exhibition held at The Gallery in Hastings Arts Forum in St Leonards. This highly innovative show gives young and emerging artists the opportunity to exhibit their work in a professional gallery, at no extra cost to themselves.

    Each year members of the Exhibitions Committee visit colleges across East Sussex and invite selected artists to exhibit.

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Speaking

  • Upcoming - June 24-25

  • Invited to participate in this week-long interdisciplinary course by Eindhoven University of Technology. The programme brought together philosophers, computer scientists, AI researchers, and artists to explore how generative AI is reshaping our understanding of creativity, authorship, and human agency.

    As part of the course, I delivered an artist talk “On AI, Creativity, and the Art of Embodied Human Performance.” I spoke about my practice, research, and creative process, reflecting on how dominant definitions of creativity often framed through logic, systems, and computational models contrast with the intuitive, embodied, and unpredictable nature of human artistic making.

    Using my photographic performance series The New Eve-olution as a central example, I discussed how digital culture transforms our bodies, attention, and imagination, and how the physical act of creation carries meaning that cannot be automated or simulated. My talk explored the risks of outsourcing creative agency to AI, while also acknowledging how assistive technologies can support rather than replace the messy, intuitive core of human creativity.

    https://www.ozsw.nl/activity/creativity-generative-ai-philosophical-perspectives-on-creative-uses-of-artificial-intelligence-2/‍ ‍

  • Leading a 90-minute embodied workshop on digital habits, attention, and the Human-eOS Coaching framework for an international community audience.

  • Presented research and digital wellbeing insights to an international cohort during the final stage of the 8-month Consciously Digital training.

  • Invited panelist on “Art as an Epistemic Practice” at the international ESDiT & 4TU.Ethics Conference, an interdisciplinary gathering bringing together philosophers, technologists, ethicists, designers, and artists to examine the societal and ethical impacts of emerging technologies.

    The panel explored how artistic practices generate unique forms of insight and understanding. I discussed my installation Freedom to Think as an example of how art can reveal lived experiences of digital autonomy, surveillance culture, and embodiment within computational systems — offering ways of knowing that extend beyond traditional academic or scientific frameworks.

  • Led guided meditations and digital wellbeing talks, workshops exploring attention, embodiment, and conscious tech use with retreat participants.

  • Co-facilitated the international launch of the Techgnosis Collective and an ongoing series of online community calls. Across these gatherings, I presented the Techgnosis Manifesto, led guided meditations, and facilitated reflective exercises and group discussions exploring digital wellbeing, contemporary art, , and the human–technology relationship. The sessions brought together participants from different cities and online spaces, creating a shared environment for dialogue, embodied practices, and collective inquiry.

  • 2023 Research Presentation, Goldsmiths Fine Art

    Shared in-progress research and moving-image work during public MFA presentations and crit sessions.

  • Delivered talks and facilitated discussions at workshops and film screenings exploring how social media shapes artistic identity, creative practice, and wellbeing. Led reflective exercises, shared research on digital culture and embodiment, and guided participants in examining the impact of platforms, algorithms, and online visibility on contemporary art-making.

  • Gave an artist talk as part of the Futures_after programme at Hypha Studios, where I presented my research into how artists engage with, resist, and are shaped by social media platforms. I discussed the series of screening events I organised in the space, which examined the cultural, psychological, and aesthetic impact of social media on contemporary artistic practice. The talk highlighted emerging themes in my work around digital identity, online performance, and the shifting conditions of visibility and creation in networked environments.

  • Featured as a guest on the podcast I Was Just Wondering with Tom, discussing my artistic practice, research interests, and the themes emerging in my early work, including digital culture, embodiment, and the role of technology in shaping contemporary creative life.

Fellowships and Awards

  • Worked as a Research Assistant to the Co-Directors of the Drawing Centre for Humans and Machines at Goldsmiths. The role primarily consisted of researching contemporary practices, theories, and debates at the intersection of drawing, technology, and human–machine relations. This included gathering and synthesising material for upcoming projects, supporting the development of research frameworks, and contributing to discussions on computational creativity, AI-assisted drawing, and experimental drawing methodologies.

    Goldsmiths Unviersity Junior Fellowship

  • Worked as a Junior Fellow supporting the MFA Fine Art programme. The role focused on facilitating the workshop structure for MFA students, helping to organise and support the delivery of practical sessions within the collaborative programme. I also assisted with the MFA final-year collaborative group project, working closely with PhD artist and tutor Clémentine Bedos to support project development and coordination. The fellowship involved hands-on organisational support, structuring creative processes, and contributing to the running of the programme’s collaborative components.

  • Shortlisted for the ACME Graduate Award, which recognises exceptional emerging artists graduating from Goldsmiths whose work demonstrates strong artistic potential and critical depth.

Events

  • Hosted a contemplative listening event at Longplayer, housed in The Lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf, a site dedicated to Jem Finer’s 1,000-year-long composition. The session invited participants to slow down, listen deeply, and reflect on duration, attention, and the experience of sound over extended time. Through guided prompts and shared quietude, the event created space for meditative listening and open conversation about time, technology, and perception within the unique acoustic environment of Longplayer.

  • November 2025 | Online Event

    This online gathering expanded on the themes shared in our Techgnosis newsletter exploring Manifesto Point 6: “Recognise our place within a larger tapestry of collective existence.” Building on ideas of interconnectedness, digital solidarity, and the illusion of separation, the session invited participants to step into a more compassionate and inclusive way of being together online.

    We reflected on how even in a world mediated by screens true connection arises through presence, attention, and the shared field between us. Drawing from ideas in the newsletter such as the collective unconscious, morphic resonance, and Grace Ndiritu’s The Ark, we explored how communities can reclaim depth, care, and belonging in an automated age.

    Together, we explored:
    – How to counter the illusion of separation created by digital infrastructures
    – What it means to practise being-together-in-the-world
    – The role of compassion, presence, and mindful technology in building inclusive communities
    – How digital solidarity can transform online spaces into vessels for care rather than extraction
    – The importance of tending belonging as an active practice, not a passive feeling

    The gathering combined grounding meditation with an open, inclusive discussion on collective existence in the digital age. Participants shared personal experiences, insights, and reflections on how we can use technology to connect, support, and uplift one another, rather than drift into isolation or algorithmic fragmentation.

    Rooted in the spirit of the newsletter, the event reaffirmed our intention to create international spaces where human bodies, minds, and spirits can gather with integrity, weaving new threads of community within the larger tapestry of life.

  • July 2025 | Techgnosis Collective Online Community Event

    This gathering expanded on the themes of our Techgnosis newsletter exploring Manifesto Point 5: “Explore the spiritual dimensions of our world.” Together, we reflected on the many ways spirituality, technology, and human experience intersect in an age shaped by rapid digital change.

    Drawing from diverse spiritual traditions, Erik Davis’s TechGnosis, and metaphors ranging from the mycelial web to the Akashic Records, we explored how ancient practices and modern technologies both invite us into deeper questions of meaning, connection, and transcendence.

    In this session, we explored:
    – Spirituality as a shared network rather than a single path
    – Technology as myth, metaphor, and modern mysticism
    – How VR, AI, and digital spaces echo ancient rituals and visionary experiences
    – The “screen” as a symbol for awareness and the inner witness
    – Stillness, presence, and slowing down in a hyper-accelerated environment
    – Mystical connections between mycelium, digital networks, and human consciousness

    Participants were guided through grounding meditation and an open discussion on the role of spirituality today, how we seek meaning beyond the material and digital realms, and how we might use technology consciously without letting it dominate our inner lives.

    Rooted in the spirit of the newsletter, the gathering created an inclusive space for people to share insights, ask questions, and explore the spiritual journey together. We approached technology not as an escape, but as a companion to spiritual practice, one that can illuminate, challenge, and expand our understanding of reality when handled with awareness.

  • May 2025 | Techgnosis Collective Online Event

    This online community gathering expanded on the themes of our Techgnosis newsletter exploring Manifesto Point 4: “The Act of Creation is Inherently Magical.” Together, we reflected on creativity as a sacred, intuitive, and transformative force, one that connects us to something larger than ourselves in an age increasingly shaped by automation and algorithms.

    Drawing from traditions referenced in the newsletter from mysticism and esotericism to Taoist philosophy we explored how creative practice has always been a bridge between the mundane and the transcendent. We discussed how digital technologies echo ancient myths and magical metaphors, and how the creative process itself remains one of the last deeply embodied pathways to meaning, self-realisation, and collective imagination.

    Together, we explored:
    – Creativity as ritual, intuition, and the unknown
    – Magic as a way of being: symbols, wonder, and mystery
    – How digital technologies mirror ancient mystical practices
    – The risks of outsourcing imagination to AI
    – Creative process as self-realisation and spiritual practice
    – Balancing Nature, technology, and the human body in creative work

    Participants engaged in guided reflection, shared personal insights, and discussed how to protect and cultivate their own creative magic in a world that often reduces creativity to output, efficiency, or algorithmic visibility.

  • February 2025 | Techgnosis Collective Online Event

    This community gathering deepened the themes of our Techgnosis newsletter exploring Manifesto Point 3: “We are part of the natural world, not separate from it.” Together, we reflected on the illusion of separation that modern technological life often creates and the deeper truth that human beings are woven into the living fabric of the Earth.

    Drawing from mystical traditions, animistic worldviews, Daoist philosophy, and contemporary thinkers such as James Bridle and Glenn Albrecht, we explored how reconnecting with nature is essential for wellbeing in an age of acceleration and urban disconnection. The session invited us to slow down, notice, and remember the interdependent field we belong to human, animal, vegetal, ecological, and more-than-human.

    In this gathering, we explored:
    – The illusion of separation and how technology amplifies it
    – Mystical experiences of oneness and interconnection
    – The wisdom of the more-than-human world (plants, animals, ecosystems)
    – Animistic perspectives and the presence of spirit in all things
    – Daoist lessons on harmony, wu wei, and aligning with nature’s rhythms
    – Eutierra and the experience of belonging to the Earth
    – How to weave nature, technology, and spirituality into daily life

    We opened the session with grounding meditation, then shared reflections on the role of nature as teacher, mirror, and companion especially for those living in highly technologised, urban environments. Participants discussed practices that restore a sense of harmony, including ritual, contemplative time outdoors, movement, breathwork, and digital boundaries that help us reconnect with the body and the natural world.

  • January 2025 | Techgnosis Collective Online Event

    This gathering developed the themes of our newsletter exploring Manifesto Point 2: “Harness Technology Mindfully.” Together, we reflected on how technology can uplift or diminish the human experience, and how mindfulness offers a path toward more embodied, intentional, and compassionate digital lives.

    Drawing on Buddhist teachings of sati, practices of embodied awareness, and contemporary reflections on distraction, design, and digital wellbeing, we explored how to navigate the digital world without losing our connection to body, breath, and presence. We discussed how attention-extractive systems shape emotion and behaviour, and how mindful habits can restore clarity and agency.

    A central part of the gathering was a collaborative drawing exercise, hosted on a shared Zoom whiteboard. Participants created a collective visual map of mindful tech use capturing sensations, intentions, boundaries, emotional cues, and small rituals that help support conscious engagement with digital tools. This co-created artwork became a living expression of our collective digital awareness and the diversity of practices that sustain it.

    Together, we explored:
    – What mindful tech use looks like in practice
    – Embodied awareness in an age of screens
    – Mindful habits for attention, emotion, and digital boundaries
    – Tools and practices that support conscious online behaviour
    – The difference between reacting and observing
    – How to design and use technology in alignment with human values

    Through shared reflection and collaborative creativity, the gathering offered a supportive space for participants to reconnect with their bodies, examine their digital habits with compassion, and imagine more mindful ways of living with technology.

  • October 2024 | Belgium (Near Brussels)

    The Techgnosis Collective hosted a 3-day immersive retreat in Belgium, bringing together artists, researchers, and practitioners for an offline residency dedicated to reconnecting the mind, body, and spirit outside the noise of the digital world. Co-organised by the founding members of the collective, the retreat created a rare space for deep rest, presence, and communal exploration of digital wellbeing and embodied living.

    Across the three days, participants engaged in a programme of grounding practices and reflective sessions, including:
    – Guided meditations and breathwork
    – Yoga Nidra and mindful movement
    – Nature walks around the forest and lakes
    – Intentional conversations on technology, attention, and embodiment
    – Workshops on conscious digital habits
    – Evening circles, shared meals, and community rituals

    Phones were voluntarily handed in on arrival, allowing everyone to fully disconnect and attune to the rhythms of the group and the natural surroundings. The retreat centred on building digital resilience, embodied awareness, and collective belonging, while exploring how we might live more consciously with technology in our everyday lives.

    Held near Brussels, this residency marked a significant moment for the Techgnosis Collective bringing its manifesto into lived practice and strengthening the foundations of an international community rooted in presence, creativity, and care.

  • September 2024 | London · Rotterdam · Brussels

    This event marked the official launch of the Techgnosis Collective, a new creative initiative exploring the relationship between technology, spirituality, creativity, and the human experience. Held simultaneously across three international locations: London, Rotterdam, and Brussels each gathering was hosted by one of the collective’s co-founders, bringing our global community together through a silent live connection.

    The evening introduced the Techgnosis Manifesto and opened a collective inquiry into how we might navigate the digital age while protecting the integrity of the human mind, body, and spirit.

    The launch included:
    – Guided meditation to ground the group in presence and shared intention
    – Presentation of the Techgnosis Manifesto, outlining our vision and principles
    – Group discussion on AI, digital culture, spirituality, and human creativity
    – Collaborative artistic mapping activity, inviting participants to collectively explore the manifesto’s themes

    Hosted at TheLondonMine in London with parallel gatherings in Rotterdam and Brussels, the event wove together physical and virtual space to initiate an international community rooted in conscious technology use, creativity, and shared human potential.

    This launch set the foundation for future workshops, retreats, and exhibitions dedicated to cultivating digital wellbeing, ecological awareness, and collective spiritual connection in an increasingly automated world.

  • May 2022 Culture Talk: “Rethinking Technology in an Off-Grid Community”

    As part of her research residency at Tinker’s Bubble, Ellen Gilbert was invited to host one of the community’s ongoing Culture Talks, a series of ongoing reflective discussions organised by the community in residents. Guided by Ellen, this session explored how the off-grid community relates to technology, sustainability, and embodied living outside digital infrastructures. The conversation examined alternative ways of being, collective resilience, and what off-grid cultures can teach us about mindful technology use in a hyperconnected world.

  • Screening and Workshop Discussion hosted by Ellen Gilbert, Futures_after at Hypha Studios

    Hosted by Ellen Gilbert, this event created an open, supportive space for artists to speak candidly about how social media and the digital economy influence their creative process, visibility, and wellbeing. Centred around a screening of The Social Dilemma, the session invited participants to reflect on algorithmic pressures, online self-presentation, and the shifting expectations of artistic labour in a platform-driven culture. Through collective discussion, the group explored how to navigate the contemporary artworld with greater awareness, agency, and mutual support.

Education