Elena Unger grew up in Vancouver, Canada and moved to London in 2015 to study art. Unger is an alumnus of Fine Art at both Central Saint Martins and Goldsmiths, as well as a graduate of philosophy at the University of Cambridge. As both an artist and an academic, her art practice and academic work mutually inform one another. As an artist, she combines painting, sculpture, performance, sound, film, and installation to produce immersive, extra-liturgical installations. As an academic, she is concerned with the ontology of artistic making, arguing that works of art do not merely represent the ineffable but participate in it.
Unger was a CHASE Research Fellow at Goldsmiths in Philosophy and Art, where she curated an exhibition of film and performance. Unger is Artist in Residence at Saint Bartholomew the Great, London’s oldest Church, where she had a solo show in 2018, and curated an exhibition in 2023 entitled Eleven Twenty Three. Unger’s work was recently featured in the December issue of British Vogue. Unger was also featured in an art history book about Saint Bartholomew the Great by Charlotte Gauthier. Unger frequently exhibits in the UK and Canada and is featured in collections internationally.