Elaine Whittaker is a Toronto-based artist, creating mixed media sculpture and installations that intersect art and science. Based on extensive scientific research and investigation, her artwork has been included in thematic exhibits examining water, blood, the genome, AIDS, cloning, climate change, and biotechnology. She exhibits nationally and internationally, and is the recipient of Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council grants. She has been an invited participant in international residencies, presented at a conference for public health professionals, and participated in workshops and festivals on biology and art. Artworks have also been featured in literary and medical periodicals, and been the subject and setting for local poets and poetry gatherings.

Concentrating on the biological forces that make us human, from the foundational processes and materials needed to form an organism (water, heat, minerals), to exploring the microscopic world of cellular ecologies, her installations incorporate an array of diverse materials and media: from pigmented wax, paint, sound work, and photo-based imagery, to wire, mosquitoes, and salt crystals.

Agreeing with the philosopher Jean Baudrilliard that panic and fear increasingly define modern society, her artworks present an examination of the cultural and social ecologies we inhabit as being transformed in unexpected, and often, uncontrollable ways. These transformations, and their accompanying emotional response, is viewed through the lens of biology, and the aesthetics of disaster.

Her recent Red Head Gallery show entitled Tether examined the process of human grief through the science of nerves and electricity. Through sculpture, photography and sound, Tether presented a meditation – on life and loss, presence and absence, tangible and ethereal ... on the energy of connection.

For Whittaker’s portfolio, please visit her website.

 
Images:

Tether (2009) installation 11’ x 27’ x 2’, Digital prints, electrical box, monofilament, nautical rope, wire, grown salt crystals