Elena Bajo
Artist Statement
My practice positions plants as active collaborators and sentient agents within ecological and ancestral systems. Drawing from my matrilineal Galician heritage—where my grandmother taught me to recognize plants as healers and teachers—I engage with Celtic druid cosmologies, treating plants as living instructors that inform each phase of my process. This echoes Karen Barad's concept of intra-action, where boundaries between human and more-than-human dissolve. My work blurs art, science, and ritual through sculptural interventions, choreographies, textile+AI, and video. I invite encounters that honor ancestral wisdom alongside contemporary ecological urgency. Each project is site-responsive, guided by attentive listening and respectful kinship with the living land. Through embodied practice rooted in my mother's sidewalk choreographies—translating landscape into movement—I cultivate spaces that nurture encounters between human and more-than-human consciousness. At Marble House Project, I propose deepening this commitment: making kin with White Oak and Mugwort as teachers, creating installations and rituals that prototype alternative futures rooted in reciprocity and ecological care.
Bio
Elena Bajo is a Spanish-American artist, choreographer, and educator whose transdisciplinary practice explores plant consciousness, ancestral knowledge, and ecological transformation through sculpture, performance, textiles, video and AI collaboration. Her artistic vision is rooted in matrilineal Druid-Celtic heritage. Bajo redefines posthuman ecologies through "transcorporeal choreographies," positioning human, more-than-human, and machine intelligence as equal co-authors. Her work has been exhibited internationally recent commissions include Manifesta 15 Barcelona (2024) and SkulpturenPark Wesenberg, DE (2024); Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; Casa Encendida, Madrid; Conde Duque, Madrid; Kunsthalle São Paulo; ARTIUM Museum, ES; Performa Biennial, NY; Bajo's work is featured in major public and private international collections and has appeared in publications such as Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, ABC Cultural, El Pais, The New York Times and Künstler Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst. She has received major support from grants and fellowships including the LMCC Art Center Residency (2023), Matadero Madrid Residency (2022), Rauschenberg Emergency Grant (2022), Foundation for Contemporary Art NY Emergency Grant, Mondriaan Fund, Audemars Piguet Award (2017), and Botín Foundation International Visual Arts Grant (2018). Trained in fine arts (Central Saint Martins, London), pharmacology (Complutense University), and genetic architecture (ESARQ UIC Barcelona), her practice bridges Laban/Bartenieff movement studies (TanzFabrik Berlin) with plant consciousness research. She is founder of S.L.A.B Project, an ecological art platform in Wonder Valley, California. Currently Coordinator of Integrative Art Studies at Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art (New York & Paris). As First Place Fellow for 2026 at C3A, Center for Comporary Art in Córdoba, Spain, she is currently developing "Al-Andalus Quantum Artemisia Dreams: Time Weaver"—a major installation exploring plant consciousness through ancestral Iberian ceramic and textile traditions.