Whittaker’s past exhibitions with Red Head:
Ode to a Fervent Sun, 2024
Filamentous, 2022
Murky Bodies, 2020
Contained, 2018
Shiver, 2015
Ambient Plagues, 2013
Cc: me, 2012
(in)trepid cultures, 2010
Tether, 2009
Spontaneous Generation, 2007
Dreadful Visitations, 2006
Red Head Creative Series Participation here.
For more information visit
www.elainewhittaker.ca | @elainetwsalt | #saltfrost
ELAINE WHITTAKER
Elaine Whittaker is a Canadian visual artist working at the intersection of art, science, medicine, and ecology. She has created artworks for over twenty-five years about Climate Change, epidemics and pandemics as our environment becomes even more fragile in this time of emerging, and re-emerging, contagions. The artworks reflect on narratives of hope and elements of anxiety as found in popular culture, scientific research, and personal experience. More recently her artworks reference climate and planetary changes through the lens of utopian and dystopian speculative and science fiction. Whittaker creates mixed media installations, sculptures, paintings, ceramics, drawings, videos, and digital images and incorporates traditional and unconventional materials –- paint, pigment, wax, clay, textiles, repurposed fibres, and mosquitoes, salt crystals, human/animal cells, and live microorganisms.
Whittaker has exhibited in art and science galleries and museums in North America, South America, Europe, China, South Korea, Mexico, and Australia, notably the Centre Pompidou (France), BioBat Art Space (US), National Library of Latvia/RIXC Centre for New Media Culture (Latvia), Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Canada), MUSA Museum of Salt (Italy), Science Gallery London (UK), Fudan University Science Gallery (China), Gwacheon National Science Museum (South Korea), Riddoch Art Gallery (Australia), Islip Art Museum (US), Science Gallery Dublin (Ireland), Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Canada), Yukon Arts Centre Gallery (Canada), McMaster Museum of Art (Canada), and the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (US).
Her artworks and interviews have been featured in books, including Viral Behaviors: Viruses and Viral Phenomena Across Science, Technology & the Arts by Roberta Buiani (2024), BioArt: Altered Realities by William Myers (2015), and, On Media, on Technology, On Life: Interviews with Innovators edited by Arthur Clay & Timothy J. Senior (2021). Her artworks have been included in art, literary, and medical journals including PhotoEd Magazine, New Visionary Magazine, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Interalia Magazine, SciArt Magazine, Scientific Enquirer, E-Squared Magazine, Enorm Magazine, VLAK, Wreck Park, Clot Magazine and Tussle Magazine. In 2018 she was one of the first Artists-in-Residence with the Ontario Science Centre in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. She has collaborated with scientists as Artist-in-Residence at the Pelling Laboratory for Augmented Biology (University of Ottawa) and participated in two residences at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Canada). She is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. She holds a BFA in Visual Art from York University, Toronto, an Art Diploma from Toronto School of Art, and BA in Anthropology from Carleton University, Ottawa.
