Secondhand Smoke

Secondhand Smoke is a solo exhibition by Ruthella Dafnis tracing grief, memory and addiction in the wake of the recent loss of her father. Taking its title from something that lingers long after it has gone, the exhibition holds grief as a residue: carried by objects, domestic interiors and the body.Immersive installations and sculptures made with prismatic materials return to the brief time Dafnis spent with her father and the partial estrangement between them. From this intimate starting point, the exhibition makes space for narratives shaped by class, care and survival.
About the ArtistRuthella Dafnis (b. 2001, Blackburn) is a Leith-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice brings together installation, sculpture, archives, and layered imagery. She creates spaces of nostalgia where working-class culture, care experience, homelessness, grief and emotional inheritance surface together. Attentive to what is retained and what is meant to be overlooked, Dafnis reclaims narratives shaped by class, displacement and state intervention.A graduate of Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, Dafnis received a BA (Hons) in Intermedia Art in 2025.