BIOGRAPHY

Elaine Whittaker is a Canadian visual artist. She considers biology as contemporary art practice. Her artworks are an intersection of art, science, medicine and ecology. Her practice is based principally in installation and includes sculpture, painting, drawing, and digital imagery, incorporating a range of materials: from the traditional - paint, pigment and wax, to the unconventional - mosquitoes, salt crystals, human cells, textiles, repurposed fibres, and live microorganisms.

Whittaker has exhibited nationally and internationally, including among others, Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), National Library of Latvia/RIXC Centre for New Media Culture (Riga, Latvia), Ontario Science Centre (Toronto, Canada), THEMUSEUM (Kitchener, Canada), BioBat Art Space (Brooklyn, US), Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, Canada), MUSA Museum of Salt (Cervia, Italy), Science Gallery London (UK), Riddoch Art Gallery (Mount Gambier, Australia), Harcourt House (Edmonton, Canada), Fudan University Science Gallery, (Shanghai, China), Gwacheon National Science Museum (Seoul, South Korea), Islip Art Museum (Long Island, US), Science Gallery Dublin (Ireland), Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Winnipeg, Canada), Yukon Arts Centre Gallery (Whitehorse, Canada), McMaster Museum of Art (Hamilton, Canada), Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (US), Kunsthaus Santa Fe (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), and Red Head Gallery (Toronto, Canada).

Whittaker has been an invited participant in residencies, workshops and festivals on science, art and medicine, and a featured artist on digital galleries including 1000 Scores: Pieces for Here, Now & Later; Art the Science; MEDinART; and Photomediations Machine. Artworks have been highlighted in literary, art, and medical periodicals and magazines, including the Humber Literary Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Interalia Magazine, SciArt Magazine, E-Squared Magazine, VLAK, Wreck Park, Clot Magazine and Tussle Magazine. Her work is featured in books including William Myers' BioArt: Altered Realities (Thames & Hudson 2015); and in On Media, on Technology, On Life: Interviews with Innovators by editors Arthur Clay & Timothy J. Senior (River Publishers 2021).

In 2018 she was one of the first Artists-in-Residence with the Ontario Science Centre (Toronto) 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 has participated in two residences at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Alberta). She has been 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. Since 2004 she has been an active member of the Red Head Gallery collective in Toronto, Canada.