Elena Cologni MRSS

Cologni gained a BA in Fine Art from Accademia di Belle Arti Brera in Milan, an MA in Sculpture from Bretton Hall College,  Leeds University and a PhD (2004) in Fine Art and Philosophy from University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins College (CSM). She is now Associate Professor in Contemporary Art and Critical Practice at the Cambridge School of Art.

Studio Projects

My work combines academic research and artistic studio and site/communities/discourse responsive practice in a ‘research as art practice as research’ approach. Through art I look at how the delicate relationship between memory, presentness and place impact on the construction of our identity. 

In my work I have been interested in sharing experiences of the unstable nature of perception and memorisation of place through time (eg. the Mnemonic Present,  Un-Folding series of video live installations 2005-2006 was developed as part of my post-doctoral project at CSM supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council). Since 2006, my work became distinctively situated and participatory interrogating on the nature of memory, the archive, remoteness, heritage, personal histories, the city. I won the Creative Lab residency at the Centre for Contemporary art Glasgow, and presented Re-Moved at Glasgow international 08 Biennale, CCA Glasgow, 2008,  centered around notions of memory as archival and removal in trying to enhance the audience’s and her own experience of who we are in any given present moment. This is the present of the exchange with others (the dialogic), which remains a core element in my practice (eg. residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2009, Arts Councils of England, Geomemos,  on measuring land through time,  with drawings and small sculptures).

My project ROCKFLUID (2011/13-2014/15) was the outcome of a residency at the University of Cambridge, through investigative public workshops (1 and 2), with Prof Lisa Saksida at the Faculty of Experimental Psychology (awarded with two Grant of the Arts,  Arts Council of England, and Escalator Visual Art Retreat at Wysing Arts Centre,  Escalator live art, Colchester Arts Centre).  Adopting an interdisciplinary and dialogic approach, this includes works such as the participatory sculptural installation Spa(e)cious (Wysing Art Centre, Galleria Artra Milan,  MK gallery Milton Keynes,  Philosophy and performance group,  performance Studies international and Kingston University Art Research Unit, Bergamo Scienza); ‘views form above’ (Institute of Astronomy,  Cambridge); L’elastico (Ruskin Gallery,  MK Gallery,  2012); the public art/sculptural interactive installations: Navigation Diagrams (MK Gallery), U’ Verruzze’ and Balancing (as part of Radio Materiality, curators Vessel, Bari, Athens Biennale 2013, and solo show at Doppelgaenger Gallery Bari, Italy, 2014), and lived dialectics: movement and rest (Q2, MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Austria, 2016).  A residency at the Gropius designed Impington Village College (Cambridgeshire, 2015/16) led to defining a growing interest in our physical/psychological relation with the built environment, and to develop the exhibition A Modernity which forgets including precious documents from the archives and the site responsive sculptural Gropius’ Offcuts. The project Seeds of Attachment (2016/18, Awards for the Arts, Arts Council of England) was exhibited at New Hall Art Collection at Edward Murray College of the University of Cambridge. The show …And Encounter  (2017/18) curated by Eliza Gluckman was accompanied by the roundtable NOMADIC AND DIALOGIC: ART AND ECOFEMINISM , and an artist talk and small exhibition at the Freud Museum in London. I was artist fellow for the 250th anniversary of Homerton College (University of Cambridge), where the project CARE: from periphery to centre  resulted in a permanent sculptural commission. The solo show ‘Elena Cologni. Pratiche di cura, o del cur(v)are‘ (2021, curated by Gabi Scardi) included a number of previous projects as well as the series of site specific interventions  The Body of/art Work (Italian Pavilion, at the 17th Biennale of Architecture, La Biennale di Venezia). A panel discussion at the Biennale included contributions by: Valeria Facchin, Gabi Scardi, Elke Krasny, Margherita Vanore, Helena Reckitt, Natalie Rudd, Merel Visse, and the curator of the Pavilion Alessandro Melis. I was commissioned the memorial 416_SR1938 (2021/23). 

After winning the Getty Research Institute grant, I am now collaborating with LA based pioneer feminist artists Mother Art Collective on the exhibition '"FROM THE HOME TO THE PLANET. A dialogue between Elena Cologni and Mother Art Collective" at the MLAC Museum (Sapienza Universita' di Roma) 8 October - 6 November 2025. In the show are previous works at the intersection of motherhood and art, specifically exploring how from caring in the private of home we care out in the public sphere. A collaborative new piece uncovers how climate change deeply affects human and plant migration. Please do contribute to it by adding your experiences here.