Elisa Giardina Papa
Elisa Giardina Papa research-based art practice seeks forms of knowledge and desire that have been lost or forgotten, disqualified, and rendered nonsensical by hegemonic demands for order and legibility. Sifting through discarded AI training datasets, censored cinema repositories, factitious colonial travel accounts, or fabricated heretical accusations, Giardina Papa traces how recurrent forms of extractive capitalism and imperialism have strained our capacities for living and laboring. Through critical yet poetic framing, she works across large-scale video installation, experimental films, and internet-based art projects to draw attention to those parts of our lives which, nonetheless, remain radically unruly, untranslatable, and incomputable.
About Elisa Giardina Papa
Her work has been exhibited and screened at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (The Milk of Dreams), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA’s Modern Mondays), the Whitney Museum (Sunrise/Sunset Commission), Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018, 6th Buenos Aires Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, XVI Quadriennale di Roma, Rhizome (Download Commission), Flaherty NYC, UnionDocs, ICA Milano, BFI London Film Festival, Center for Contemporary Art Tashkent, Uzbekistan, M+ Hong Kong, among others.
Giardina Papa is also a founding member of the artist collective Radha May. Together with Indian artist Nupur Mathur and Ugandan artist Bathsheba Okwenje, they develop performances and art installations that reveal reveal hidden histories and peripheral sites, exploring their relation to gender, sexuality, and colonialism.
Giardina Papa lives and works in New York and Sant’Ignazio, Sicily.
