SIMON FREDERICK: ‘THE UNSPOKEN ELEGANCE OF STILLNESS’
3rd March, 2025 – 12th March, 2025
Gallery OCA
ART‘OTEL
HOXTON
LONDON
Simon Fredericks, the acclaimed artist and filmmaker, is set to debut his first art installation film, The Unspoken Elegance of Stillness, at art’otel London Hoxton, running from March 3 to March 12, 2025. The exhibition, a multi-screen immersion into light, shadow, and form, is curated by Sherece Rainford, founder of Gallery OCA, and serves as the opening chapter of Fredericks’s year-long residency at the hotel. The collaboration will unfold over the coming months with a series of exhibitions, discussions, and events aimed at deepening the conversation between art, culture, and community.
Fredericks draws inspiration from Dostoevsky’s oft-quoted assertion that “beauty will save the world.” In The Unspoken Elegance of Stillness, he turns his lens to the quiet power of Black femininity, offering a meditation on resilience and grace. Moving beyond the narrow definitions of Western aesthetics, the installation presents Black women in a striking interplay of light and shadow, rendering stillness not as void, but as a quiet assertion of presence.
A cinematic exploration of presence Part film, part living canvas, The Unspoken Elegance of Stillness blurs the boundaries between fine art and immersive storytelling. Fredericks employs still photography, moving images, artificial intelligence, poetry, and music to create an environment where silhouettes shift almost imperceptibly, light pulses like breath, and shadows seem to whisper.
Shot entirely in black and white, the work accentuates texture, movement, and introspection, evoking a language as intellectual as it is poetic.
Each frame is both portrait and performance—an extended hand, a drifting fabric, the quiet closure of eyes—gestures that unfold with a deliberate patience. The installation is structured in three movements, each exploring the interior as a physical, emotional, and historical space: Echoes of the Interior, The Interior as Landscape, and Reverberations in Stillness.
“With The Unspoken Elegance of Stillness, I wanted to create a space where silence speaks, where presence is power, and where Black femininity is seen in its fullest, most unguarded beauty,” Fredericks says. “This work is a meditation on stillness—not as absence, but as a force of resilience, grace, and self-possession. In a world that often demands movement, this installation invites us to pause, to listen, and to see beyond the surface. It’s an honor to debut this work at art’otel Hoxton, a space that embraces the intersection of art and experience, and to collaborate with Sherece Rainford and Gallery OCA in bringing this vision to life.”
With its hushed yet commanding presence, The Unspoken Elegance of Stillness offers not just a viewing experience, but an invitation—an urging to engage with stillness as something deeply alive, as a language unto itself.
SIMON FREDERICK: ‘THE UNSPOKEN ELEGANCE OF STILLNESS’ opens on the 3rd of March, 2025 until the 12th of March, 2025 at ART‘OTEL, London
©2025 Gallery OCA
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