Elena Papanikolakis lives and works on Gadigal Land (Sydney), Australia. Her practice is centred around juxtaposition and melds together found materials, personal and cultural remnants, and memory to probe the nature of consciousness and being, and experiences, function, and authenticity. She is interested in exploring the periphery of understanding and the potential presented when observations are unravelled through degrees of abstraction. Her works are heavily invested in material processes and often consist of painting, collage, and text.
—Isobel Parker Philip, Curator of Photographs, Art Gallery of New South Wales, from the catalogue essay for the series Unbound, included in Primavera 2017: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia 2017
She was the recipient of the 2018 Ursula Hoff Institute Award for Postgraduate excellence in Visual Art and Music, as part of the National Works on Paper Prize at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. She has also been awarded the Art Gallery of New South Wales Paris Studio, the 2016 Eva Breuer Travelling Art Scholarship and NAVA’s NSW Artists’ Grant. She has undertaken numerous residencies including the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris) and Parramatta Artist Studios.
Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions including: SLIPPERY WHEN WET at Olsen Annexe, Light Matter at Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, There is Fiction in the Spaces Between 2019 John Fries Award at UNSW Galleries, Sydney; Primavera 2017: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Parramatta Artist Studios at Artspace, Sydney.