Ears in the Stomach on the Glass, 2018, video installation. Graduation work from Gerrit Rietveld Academie

Exhibition text by Jacob Dwyer:
A circle of torch light moves around the screen to illuminate a gravel path. In its centre a solitary green grasshopper hops into the night. Suddenly it changes direction and lands on the lens of the camera, rendering itself into a large blurred silhouette. As the device fails to find focus there is a distinct loss of control and in this seemingly innocuous moment hierarchies warp. The possibility of a one-way anthropomorphic gaze is denied as the thing being filmed and the thing filming align in their status as subjects. Through Vala’s subsequent treatment of this clip the grasshopper begins to reappear like a spell. In doing so she forms new, less stable grounds for representation in which all parties involved are implicated.