Elena Costelian’s work is rooted in a process of roaming and exploring unique territories whose image is familiar to us. His works play with the idea of shifting the image we have from elsewhere. Places that bear witness to contemporary history are photographed, creating a sensitive cartography that contributes to a re-reading of history. Images of moments frozen on film, residues of our collective history, which Elena Costelian strives to reconstruct by giving them a volume, a scale and a depth of field. These devices such as installations and performances stage the out of scope of the photographic framing and raise the question of the veracity of the historical narrative frozen by the image. These reconstructions are never reproduced in a historical way, but their realistic mode reveals the simulacra of contemporary history. Through his wanderings, punctuated by encounters, the artist transposes into these scenic devices the point of intersection where collective and individual memory intertwine and overlap; the small story and the large one. “I envision the journey as an Odyssey, taking as a starting point a place, a territory that I explore in order to build a device used to reconstitute the narrative framework of a story. The question of travel, as well as the notion of exoticism that results from it, runs through his plastic work. It is by taking the routes of possibilities that the artist invites the visitor to experience a sensitive invitation to discover new places.
Elena Costelian was born in 1979 (Romania), she is a graduate of the École des Beaux Arts de Nantes and the École Supérieure Arts décoratifs de Strasbourg. In 2009, she staged Transit, presented at the Première festival at the Théâtre au Maillon in Strasbourg (FR). The play combines installation, performance and theatre and is broadcast on Arte France and Germany. In 2010, she presented “Le désir gonfe”, a participatory installation commissioned by the Centre Pompidou in Metz (FR). In 2011, she will participate in the Biennale d’art Contemporain “Evento” in Bordeaux (FR). Also in 201, Elena Costelian initiated with Julie Meyer, “Sail the world project”, around a photographic and sound project that they realize during the time of a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on board a sailboat (France – Caribbean). For her first solo exhibition, she presents the project “Tchenobyl on tour” in 2012 at the Kunstahlle in Mulhouse (FR), whose installation La Veillée is accompanied by a musical performance in collaboration with the Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse (FR). Since 2009 she has collaborated occasionally with Central Booking and then the White Box Art Center in New York (US). His first solo exhibition in New York takes place at the Center for Book Arts in 2013. This exhibition is developed during a period of residence at the Friche de la belle de Mai and supported by Astérides (Marseille) as well as the art centre CEEAC (Strasbourg).