Thomas Llyr James is an emerging Welsh artist and Steiner educator working between Cardiff, UK and Istanbul, TR. His practice is rooted in the expanded field of social sculpture and connective practice, exploring how art operates as a transformative force within both material and social ecologies.

Working across sculpture, performance, photography and poetry, James constructs human–land narratives that examine the past, present and speculative futures of material cultures and sacred systems. His work investigates how symbolic relationships, ecological awareness and collective agency intersect, asking how we might re-animate our relationship to world, culture and shared meaning.

 

"I see coherent threads through my work; they live in every medium I engage with. All threads weave to become artwork. Finding them could be a spirituality for me. I see myself not as an artist, but as someone who has tapped into something—art flows through me, through my hands. I become a transformer through performance, reaching states inwards and outwards. Sculpture and photography capture these experiences and processes, using poetry to communicate a human being following something symbolic—a true twin of life, following something sacred and archaic, a true perspective-bender: Art."

 

His practice extends beyond gallery spaces into the public domain, activating participatory and socially engaged projects. These include The Royal College of Fungi, a bio-mimetic institutional framework inspired by fungal networks that reimagines systems of knowledge and exchange, and Gweld – Society for Social Sculpture and Connective Practice, an initiative based in Cardiff exploring collective agency, dialogue and creative citizenship, co-founded with Social Sculpture practitioner Seher Deniz Kiran.

Through these interconnected works, James positions art as both sacred inquiry and civic action — a living process through which individuals and communities shape the world they inhabit.