Elin̶a̵ ̴Z̸a̸z̵ulia
Biography
Elina Zazulia is an interdisciplinary artist from Russia (born in Blagoveshchensk, Amur Oblast), currently residing in Colombia. She graduated from the Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design (St. Petersburg, Russia) with a degree in Architectural Environment Design, which has significantly influenced her approach to space and form. Elina works at the intersection of audiovisual art, video art, and installation, exploring posthumanist ideas and the role of digital technologies in expanding perception and reinterpreting materiality. Her meditative projects evoke a sense of a living, breathing organism, where matter pulsates, and space seems to come alive and move (in)dependently. Known for their organic dynamism, her immersive projects have been exhibited internationally in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Russia. In 2024, her solo exhibition ‘BODY’ was held at Masters Digital Gallery in Saint Petersburg, dedicated to posthuman identity and the processes of bodily transformation.
Artist Statement
In my artistic practice, I explore themes such as corporeality, posthuman identity, hybridity, and symbiosis. I am also intrigued by modern research in the cognitive sciences. Despite the topics covered in my works, their crux lies in creating conditions and an atmosphere where the viewers are invited to navigate their own associative pathways. Through the meticulous manipulation of movement, form, rhythms, and acoustic texture, I shape the perceptual landscape for their own interpretations on the aspects I touch upon.
Generative graphics and sound are foundational mediums in my artistic practice. These abstract, ephemeral forms offer a unique perspective through which I reevaluate space, time, and the intricate dynamics of nature, examining our connection with the world. What captivates me most is the inherent variability within the movements brought to life through code — a dynamic evolution and adaptability that mirrors the seamless adjustments of a living organism to its environment.
I am also interested in working with neural networks. Experimenting with them is an opportunity to find weird, unusual images, to rethink well-established visions of certain things and processes. In these endlessly evolving, mutating, infinitely created shapes, I discern the manifestation of fundamental patterns that elude visual capture.
I find my inspiration in the surroundings — in the movement of various organisms, in physical and chemical reactions, in natural phenomena. Art, for me, thus becomes a space where I can delve into the mental, cognitive, biological, and physiological processes that captivate my interest from various perspectives. Pixels and oscillations merging into a single audiovisual matter, representing various states, reviving, stimulating, helping to notice more, to find new interweavings. Technologies thus serve as a tool for exploration.
In a world marked by constant flux and uncertainty, where our presence is as indefinite as the changes surrounding us, media art emerges as the nexus — a delicate point of connection, finely tuned to the nuanced awareness of human existence. It appears at the midpoint between the visible and the unrevealed.