Eli Cortiñas

Eli Cortiñas’ practice centers around the idea of challenging cinematic memory through analyzing and re-editing pre-existing footage and merging it with her own film, video and sound recordings. By first collecting, organizing and classifying the sourced material, the artist then reworks and reimagines the found film, YouTube, advertising or animation footage in a next step, disrupting and re-structuring narrative flows. Cortiñas’ video montages, collages and object arrangements suggest new and different meanings to appropriated and edited footage, in order to debunk myths and hegemonic narratives, as the artist of Cuban descent states. This method of ‘editing as writing’ generates a mixed feeling of both identification and alienation. A deep dive into psychological, aesthetic and societal questions, Eli Cortiñas manages to create an ambiguous and affirmative transparency within her work inviting her audience to explore power, memory and politics.

Eli Cortiñas studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and at the European Film College Ebeltoft, Denmark. She was a guest professor at the Art Academy Kassel and the Art Academy Mainz and shared a professorship for Spatial Concepts with Candice Breitz at the University of Art Braunschweig from 2019 till 2022. Cortiñas has recently been appointed professor for Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. She has received numerous grants and residencies, including Fundación Botín, Kunstfonds, Villa Massimo, Berlin Senate, Villa Sträuli, Goethe Institute, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Rupert and Karl Schmidt Rottluff among others.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Bienal Fotonoviembre, TEA/ Fundacion Mapfre, Tenerife, ES (solo project in ‚Artists in Selection‘) (2023); The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted, Kunstverein Braunschweig, DE (2022); Walls Have Feelings, KINDL – Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE (2021); Remixers never die, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, LT (2019); Focus screening: Eli Cortiñas, Kunsthaus NRW, Aachen, DE (2018); Double Feature: Eli Cortiñas, SCHIRN Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, DE (2017) and Love is worn around the neck, Kunstraum Innsbruck, AT (2012).

Her work was part of several group exhibitions, such as El Centro Ha Muerto, Que Viva el Centro, Goethe Institut Buenos Aires, ARG (2023); Landscapes of Labour, KAI10 Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, DE (2022); Existing Otherwise – The Future of Coexistence, SCCA (Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art), Tamale, GH (2022); The 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Dobrolyubova, RU (2021); Thinking like an Octopus, or: Tentacular Grasp, Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, DE (2021); Fotografie Heute: Resistant Faces, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2020); MASKE. Kunst der Verwandlung, Kunstmuseum Bonn (2019); Büro komplex – Die Kunst der Artothek im politischen Raum, Kunsthaus NRW, Aachen, DE (2019); Film – Footage – Photography, Museum for Photographie Braunschweig, DE (2017); Ten Emerging Artists. Contemporary Experimental Films and Video Art from Germany, Goethe Institute Canada, CAN (2017) and Les Rencontres Internationales at Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR (2011).

Eli Cortiñas, born 1979 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, lives and works in Berlin.