In the Box: Elena Damiani’s Dust Tail

The Chrysler Museum of Art welcomes Peruvian artist Elena Damiani to The Box.

Contemporary Peruvian artist Elena Damiani’s multi media practice incorporates the disciplines of geology, geography, cartography, archeology, and astronomy in order to re-interpret the world around us.

In her recent work Dust Tail (2016), Elena overlays numerous images of comets’ blazing dust tails into a stimulating collage printed on silk chiffon. The airiness of the material causes it to ripple, suggesting the movement of the stars. The work hangs in three layers, forming a half ellipse, which is also part the orbital trajectory a comet follows. The piece is a part of the artist’s larger practice of understanding the present by looking into the past and the potential of images to resonate and prompt a universe of associations in collective memory….

Born in Lima, Peru, Damiani splits her time between Lima and Copenhagen, Denmark. She studied architecture at Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, then transferred to the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Corriente Alterna where she graduated in Fine Arts in 2005. In 2010 she received her MFA at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

This is the first presentation of Damiani’s in the southeast region of the United States, though her work has been exhibited internationally: IV Poly/Graphic Triennial San Juan (2015), Vienna Biennale (2015), Venice Biennale (2015), MUAC Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico City, 2015); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, 2015), MOCAD Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, 2015); Americas Society (New York, 2014), BIM Bienal de la Imagen y Movimiento (Buenos Aires, 2014), Mercosul Biennial (Porto Alegre, 2013), Museo Tamayo (Mexico City, 2013), MAC Museo de Arte Contemporaneo (Lima, 2013), among many others.