No hay cielo detrás / No Heaven Behind
At the age of twenty-seven, the author, Paula Elena Ramos, suffered a sudden death: a total blockage of the heart’s electrical system, an exceptional case with no known cause according to science.
During a resuscitation episode, her body was left behind and she crossed the darkness into the dance of luminous silhouettes. She returned with an implanted motor and, since then, she has been chasing the answers to those questions that remained suspended.
Through the use of analogue photography, archival documents, X-rays and family photographs, the project explores an extreme physical experience without scientific explanation and the artist’s equally unexplained out-of-body experience.
While searching for answers, No Heaven Behind challenges established medical and religious systems, analysing the clash between the weight of science and the volatile nature of the out-of-body experience. Both worlds coexist; physics and metaphysics.
Paula Elena Ramos is an interdisciplinary artist from Valencia, Spain. After studying Social Sciences, she began her artistic practice in video and performance before completing a Master’s degree in Contemporary Photography at LENS, Madrid. Working across photography, moving image, poetic writing, archives and performance, she explores themes of family, violence and the body through a critical and poetic lens. Her practice draws on personal experience to question established systems of knowledge and representation, while her theoretical research examines technical devices as agents that shape the symbolic meaning of images. Her work has received several grants and awards, including recognition from Baffest Festival, the Royal Photographic Society, the Paco Casanova Photography Grant and Descubrimientos PHotoESPAÑA.