Coelina George May 2026

“It’s a circle,” she says. “Most art is about the object. I’m interested in the life between the objects. The journey.”

That philosophy— keeping the entropy —is the thesis of her work. George rose to prominence not through a blockbuster exhibition, but through a series of "anti-objects." Her 2022 installation The Memory of Water at a disused bathhouse in Berlin consisted of nothing but seven silk panels submerged in copper tubs. As the silk rotted over six weeks, the colors bled into the water, creating a new pigment. Visitors paid £40 to watch things decay. coelina george

“We spend so much time preserving things,” she says, pouring tea into a chipped ceramic cup. “But beauty is usually found in the moment just before total collapse.” Born to a Malayali mother (a botanist) and a Greek father (a jazz drummer), George describes her childhood as “sensory overload in the best way.” Growing up between the spice markets of Kerala and the avant-garde jazz clubs of Athens, she learned early that texture was a language. “It’s a circle,” she says