Artist: Eli Cortiñas
Exhibition title: The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted
Curated by: Nuno de Brito Rocha and Benedikt Johannes Seerieder
Venue: Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany
Date: July 2 – October 2, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig
Note: Exhibition booklet is available here
ELI CORTIÑAS (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, lives and works in Berlin) crosses contemporary and historical visual cultures in her artistic practice. She dissects them with the procedures of montage and collage, shifts limiting attributions and creates space for feminist and decolonial narrative patterns. Kunstverein Braunschweig dedicates Eli Cortiña’s extensive body of work the first institutional solo show in Germany. The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted brings together key works and presents installations newly conceived especially for this exhibition in the Villa Salve Hospes.
The artist uses various heterogeneous sources to create her video and spatial installations. By appropriating, re-reading, and reassembling historical films, present-day TV shows, commercials, propaganda and educational films, or YouTube videos, Cortiñas brings together what only seems distant and reveals the production and consumption contexts inscribed in the images, as well as the patterns of perception within which they operate.
Eli Cortiña’s work revolves around the visual and cultural representation of female identity and its media representation, considering it in relation to class, education, attribution of ethnicity, age, mobility, and a wide range of other intersections. Her works invite us to approach themes of power and memory culture both historically and through pop-culture.
Eli Cortiñas was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and lives and works in Berlin. From 2019 to 2022 she shared a professorship with artist Candice Breitz at HBK Braunschweig and recently received the call as professor of media art at HGB Leipzig. She studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and at the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. She has received numerous grants and residencies such as the Villa Massimo in Rome, Italy, the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff or the Fundación Botín Scholarship and has been represented in several group exhibitions and film festivals including 6th Ural Biennial Ekaterinburg (2021); Rendering Refusal, Transmediale, Berlin (2021); Resistant Faces, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2020); Maske. Kunst der Verwandlung, Kunstmuseum Bonn (2019); Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art, Riga (2018); Prospectif Cinéma, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016).
Numerous solo exhibitions have also been dedicated to her work, including: Always Bite the Hand That Feeds You, Convent Contemporary Art Space, Ghent (2019); Remixers Never Die, Contemporary Art Center Vilnius (2018), What About Some Tropical Delights in Neoliberal Times?, Centro de Arte Atlantico Moderno/ La Regenta, Las Palmas (2015); Partial Nudity, Kunsthalle Budapest (2013).
Eli Cortiñas, I’ve Always Demanded More From The Sunset, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, I’ve Always Demanded More From The Sunset, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, I’ve Always Demanded More From The Sunset, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, I’ve Always Demanded More From The Sunset, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, I’ve Always Demanded More From The Sunset, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, I’ve Always Demanded More From The Sunset, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, I’ve Always Demanded More From The Sunset, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, I’ve Always Demanded More From The Sunset, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, In Order For People to Feel It. That’s Called „Soul“, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, In Order For People to Feel It. That’s Called „Soul“, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, In Order For People to Feel It. That’s Called „Soul“, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Not Gone With The Wind, 2020, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Not Gone With The Wind, 2020, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Not Gone With The Wind, 2020, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Not Gone With The Wind, 2020, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Your Bitcoin Will Not Save You, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Your Bitcoin Will Not Save You, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Not Gone With The Wind, 2020, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Not Gone With The Wind, 2020, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Walls Have Feelings, 2019, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Walls Have Feelings, 2019, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Walls Have Feelings, 2019, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Destined to be Forever A work In Progress, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark
Eli Cortiñas, Destined to be Forever A work In Progress, 2022, Installation View at Kunstverein Braunschweig 2022, Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein Braunschweig, photo: Joe Clark