elena volkova

About the Artist

Elena Volkova is a Ukrainian-born interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator, whose creative practice uses historic and contemporary photographic techniques to explore complex themes of domesticity, liminality, and subjective experience. Volkova has been a fellow at Hamiltonian Artists, and exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Elena received several recognitions and awards in support of her creative practice, including Janis Meyer Traveling Fellowship, Corcoran Women’s Committee Grant, MD State Arts Council Creativity Grant, and Baltimore Municipal Art Society Travel Prize. Volkova has been a social practice resident artist at Maryland Center for History and Culture, Anacostia Arts Center, and Maker General among others. Volkova resides in Baltimore, MD and teaches Photography at Stevenson University.  

Artist's Statement

Elena Volkova: Statement -Art is what has happened to the viewer Robert Irwin Several concepts come to mind when thinking about liminality: uncertainty, as well as openness, potential, and the state of becoming, between-ness, transition, neutrality. The state of Neither-Nor (or Either-Or, quantitatively holding the same value and relevance in opposition). The Liminal surrounds us; it is the periphery of every moment of our existence, the behind-the-scenes of our reality; it makes no judgments and no assertions; it constitutes our everyday mundane poetry. It is simply there. In the liminal state, the boundaries and factors dissolve, bringing to the attention the low-key overlooked moments. In Paperscapes, a series of graphite representational drawings and photographs of pieces of paper, I would like to bring the viewer’s attention to the discrepancy between reality and artifice. Employing the ideas of trompe-l’oil, I am interested in the threshold between the real and the false, and the moment at which the two become interchangeable. These photographs and drawings are of ordinary, commonplace, and familiar objects, bringing the viewer’s attention to the neutrality of a piece of paper, as well as its potential.