Elaine Whittaker is a Toronto-based sculpture and mixed media installation artist. Intersecting art with science, she explores the impact of toxins and chemicals, the effects of genetic engineering, the microbial origins of life, and the emergence of infectious disease. Her artworks are based on extensive research into scientific processes, or collaborations with scientists and other artists. They have been included in exhibits examining water, the genome, AIDS, biotechnology, and a multi-disciplinary festival on dance and biology. Works have also been featured in literary and medical magazines focusing on science, biotechnology, and pandemics.

Elaine has been the recipient of a number awards and grants, and an invited participant in international residencies. Her work is included in a number of private and corporate collections. She holds a BFA in Visual Art from York University, Toronto, a Fine Arts diploma from the Toronto School of Art, and a BA in Anthropology from Carleton University, Ottawa.

In June 2006, she presented Dreadful Visitations, a series of installations and paintings that challenged the viewer to confront their own fragility against microbial scourges. Brightly painted respiratory masks, sculptural constructions of salt and chicken bones, paintings of wax with insects, constituted the array of mixed media work in this exhibit. They depicted in a tension between the beauty of surprise and the horror of the unknown, vectors and hosts of infectious disease today.