Elena Lavellés

About:

Visual artist and filmmaker, originally from Madrid (Spain), she has been living and working between New York City, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Syracuse during the last six years.

Her work is research and fieldwork-based and explores the intersection between social and geological layers. She focuses on capitalism expansion, policies of extraction of natural resources linked to the logic of power and transnational exploitation, as well as social resistance movements and their associated displacements, to create installations, in which she uses photography, video, performance, drawings, and archival material. This form of combining cultural and natural landscape allows her to deploy a historical and environmental fabric that delves into how certain materials and their exploitation can talk about environmental racism, ecological debt, corporate imperialism, resilience and, especially, the importance of decolonizing, not just history but also our concept of nature and the construction we have made of it.  

Education:

She has been part of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, completed her MFA in Photography & Media and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts -CalArts
studied an MFA in Contemporary Art from the European University of Madrid, and a degree in Fine Arts in the CES Felipe II (Universidad Complutense of Madrid). She also studied Philosophy and Geology in the Complutense University of Madrid.

Exhibitions and residencies:

She has screened and exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Quito, Mexico City, Barcelona, and Madrid, among others. She is the recipient of different prizes, grants, and residencies such as Generaciones 2018. La Casa Encendida, MonteMadrid Foundation (Madrid, Spain), BBVA Foundation 2017 Multiverse Grants for Video Art Creation (Bilbao, Spain), 2017 Blueproject Foundation Residency (Barcelona, Spain), 2017 Centre for Artistic Residencies Matadero Madrid, NYSCA 2017 Electronic Media & Film Finishing Fund Grant (New York, EE.UU), PICE Mobility Grant, 2016. Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action, AC/E (Spain), Residency Grants for Young Artists and Curators in Visual Arts, 2016. CAM (Madrid, Spain), Excellence Fellowship from the Mexican Government for Art Production, 2015 (Mexico City, México), Efroymson Family Foundation Project Grant (Indianápolis, EE.UU.), Bartman Grant (Los Ángeles, EE.UU.), XXV Circuitos de Artes Plásticas de la Comunidad de Madrid, Intransit 2014 or Artist Residency Tropical Lab 8, 2014 (Singapore) among others.

The residency of Elena Lavellés is a part of the project The New Dictionary of Old Ideas.

Date of residency: 4. 6.–31. 7. 2019

http://elenalavelles.com/