{"title":"Elina Tailor","description":"\u003cp\u003eElina Tailor (b. 1997) is a Latvian artist based in Riga. Her paintings and sculptures use familiar objects to examine how meaning, memory, and desire take shape. Recognizable symbols give her a starting point; their associations develop through an intuitive process, leaving room for the viewer’s interpretation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003ePretty But Useless\u003c\/em\u003e, vintage imagery becomes a way to question the relationship between value and usefulness. Her sculptural works pair antique plates with food forms, bringing the histories of everyday objects into contact with nostalgia. \u003cem\u003eHide and Seek\u003c\/em\u003e, her Bachelor’s degree collection, considers the shared rules and assumptions that influence what people notice—and what they overlook.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTailor completed her BA in Painting at the Art Academy of Latvia in 2026 and is pursuing an MA there. Her solo exhibitions include \u003cem\u003ePretty But Useless\u003c\/em\u003e at Grand Poet Hotel and \u003cem\u003eHappy Meal\u003c\/em\u003e at ZEIT Art Gallery. She was a 2025 SEB Scholarship finalist and participated in ArtCamp Andorra.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"elina-tailor-i-told-chat-gpt-about-you","title":"I TOLD CHAT GPT ABOUT YOU","description":"\u003cp\u003eI told ChatGPT about you. Now you live there the way you live in me: refracted and untouchable.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elina Tailor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53195259576640,"sku":null,"price":6700.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0949\/5671\/6352\/files\/larger_906679ac-c601-4284-a872-78d88fdcfdff.jpg?v=1790014739"},{"product_id":"elina-tailor-high-on-believing","title":"HIGH ON BELIEVING","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere is a particular kind of intoxication that comes from believing your life could still become larger than it is now.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn HIGH ON BELIEVING, a pink plastic bag floats against an immense field of blue. The object could hardly be more ordinary: mass-produced, made to be used and discarded. Across its surface, however, the words “INSPIRED BY THE FEAR OF BEING AVERAGE” read almost like a declaration against the object’s own ordinariness. That contrast between disposability and aspiration gives the painting its psychological charge.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor Elina, possibility shapes the way she approaches life. A challenge can become an opening, and a familiar moment can send a life in an entirely new direction. She is energized by the sense that there is always something further to pursue, and she wants to meet what comes with full commitment. The title captures that conviction perfectly: the exhilaration of believing that more can be made from the life in front of you, and the refusal to leave your own potential untouched.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe blue field carries a physical intensity of its own. Its color shifts with the surrounding light, appearing at times deep and saturated, then moving toward a vivid ultramarine under different conditions. The work therefore resists a single, fixed appearance. Its atmosphere changes from one encounter to the next, giving the painting a presence that cannot be fully captured in one photograph.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHIGH ON BELIEVING speaks to a familiar human desire: to trust that life still has more in store for us than we can presently see.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elina Tailor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53195260068160,"sku":null,"price":5700.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0949\/5671\/6352\/files\/larger_3f8a4ad0-315d-4f1c-acfe-b607f4111d6d.jpg?v=1790014744"},{"product_id":"elina-tailor-its-divorce-before-i-say-i-do","title":"IT’S DIVORCE BEFORE I SAY I DO","description":"\u003cp\u003eIT’S DIVORCE BEFORE I SAY I DO begins with a contradiction we know intimately: the desire to be loved, coupled with the instinct to protect ourselves from what love might eventually cost.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA heart-shaped balloon has been covered in spikes. It remains delicate and inviting, yet any attempt to come closer risks pain. The art piece asks whether our defenses simply protect intimacy or gradually make intimacy harder to reach.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe title intensifies that tension by placing the possibility of separation before the promise of commitment. Before the words “I do” can even be spoken, the ending has already been imagined. It speaks to the calculations many of us carry into relationships: how much to reveal, how much to withhold, when to trust, and how much of ourselves we are willing to risk without knowing what will be returned.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart of the OBSESSIONS collection, the work considers why we are so often drawn to what resists us. Some things become more compelling once they stop behaving as expected. Perhaps uncertainty makes us look longer, desire harder, and hold on more tightly. Or perhaps what fascinates us most is precisely what we can never completely understand, possess, or make safe.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elina Tailor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53195260559680,"sku":null,"price":7800.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0949\/5671\/6352\/files\/larger_62a2572a-341d-479b-a41f-5082080a4d4e.jpg?v=1790014750"},{"product_id":"elina-tailor-public-display-of-affection","title":"PUBLIC DISPLAY OF AFFECTION","description":"\u003cp\u003ePUBLIC DISPLAY OF AFFECTION explores a familiar human contradiction: the pull between attraction and warning. A snarling Dalmatian stands inside a translucent pink inflatable pool lined with spikes, transforming an object associated with play and innocence into a kind of emotional fortification. Every signal in the image tells us to keep our distance. Yet the pink plastic, the dog’s familiarity, the humor, and the sheer absurdity of the scene make distance strangely difficult.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat contradiction extends far beyond the painting. We are often most conscious of desire when something resists us. A person who remains unknowable, an idea we are told not to pursue, a life that seems just beyond our reach. A boundary does more than prevent access. Sometimes, simply by existing, it creates the temptation to cross it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is where the painting becomes more psychologically complicated. The Dalmatian bares its teeth. The spikes announce danger. The enclosure has been built to protect what is inside. And still, we move closer with our eyes. Protection and invitation begin to occupy the same space, raising an uncomfortable question: how much of attraction belongs to the thing itself, and how much is created by the fact that we cannot fully have it?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerhaps we do not always desire in spite of the warning. Sometimes the warning becomes part of the desire.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe question is not whether we saw the danger. It is whether we are willing to admit that, somewhere in us, the danger makes looking away harder.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elina Tailor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53195260723520,"sku":null,"price":8900.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0949\/5671\/6352\/files\/larger_ce8eba0c-7a6a-4f79-a4b3-393612de1f33.jpg?v=1790014753"},{"product_id":"elina-tailor-up-and-away","title":"UP AND AWAY","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn escalator is designed to take us somewhere. Here, the destination has disappeared, leaving only the promise of ascent.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eElina Tailor turns that familiar upward movement into something more uneasy. The escalator rises through a field of gold, clean and uninterrupted, with nothing to tell us where it ends. At first, the image feels optimistic. To rise is to advance. To go higher is to have succeeded.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut Tailor is less interested in arrival than in what happens to us along the way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe writes, “The strange thing about moving upward long enough is that eventually nobody asks where the ride began in the first place. Maybe that’s why some people stop caring about what gets left behind, as long as there is still enough left to keep the ride going.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe escalator begins to look less like a path toward success and more like a machine that depends on our willingness to keep moving. The higher we go, the farther the beginning recedes. People, places, circumstances, even earlier versions of ourselves can become harder to see from above.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTailor’s phrase “enough left to keep the ride going” gives the work its darker edge. It suggests that ascent is never innocent. Something sustains it. Labor, money, relationships, resources, memory. Yet none of those things appear in the painting. We see only the polished mechanism and the beautiful upward pull.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis work does not reject ambition, nor does it romanticize where we came from. Instead, it asks what success asks us to forget, and whether we notice the moment forgetting becomes part of the price.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe escalator keeps rising.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elina Tailor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53195260985664,"sku":null,"price":16500.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0949\/5671\/6352\/files\/larger_d51d1294-75de-4361-a339-e6fb0a7e1bdc.jpg?v=1790014758"}],"url":"https:\/\/kbfineart.com\/collections\/elina-tailor.oembed","provider":"KB FINE ART","version":"1.0","type":"link"}