Brought up in the family of Saint Petersburg scientists, Elena explores in her practice the hidden tension between advanced scientific research and archaic instincts that continue to shape human behaviour. Her artistic practice lies at the intersection of performance, sculpture, and drawing, where different media interact to form a single visual space.
In collaboration with composer Dmitry Kourliandski and poet Dimitris Yalamas, the artist developed the visual concept for the opera Nekyia. The sound score, based on MRI scan recordings and performed by the Allegro Moderato orchestra, became the basis for the performance with which Elena reached the finals of the SKY ARTE Pomilio Blumm Prize reality show.
At the same time, within the interdisciplinary platform OUNPO_Visual Forum, she worked in dialogue with neuroscientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, integrating data from cognitive research into her artistic method.
The artist’s works have been shown at leading international venues and within major biennial projects: the 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, the 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial (Yekaterinburg), and the parallel program of Manifesta 10 (Saint Petersburg). Group exhibitions were held at Palazzo Strozzi / IED (Florence), Fondazione dei Monti (Bologna), MART Museum (Trento and Rovereto), Palazzo Re Rebaudengo (Guarene d’Alba), Serralves Museum and Casa Rosa (Porto), Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin), San Francisco Art Institute (San Francisco), Museum of New Art (Detroit), Spiral Wacoal Art Center (Tokyo), and Electro Museum (Moscow). Solo exhibitions and performances were presented at PERMM (Perm), Sisso Gallery (Paris), Kunsthalle São Paulo (São Paulo), Rong Wrong (Amsterdam), Assab One (Milan), Büchsenhausen.lab (Innsbruck), and Warwick Arts Centre (Coventry, UK).