Elen Braga

How do you protect yourself?

I run.

What was your last dream?

It was a good day that ended very badly. I felt so sad and went to bed crying.
I dreamed that I was a noodle. A noodle with floating eyes but no mouth to speak.  My anguish for being almost eaten by the people made me think that a noodle's life lasts just a little period of time between the making and the swallowing of it.
No time left to cry, suffer, laugh, or love.  what would I do with such a short lifetime as a noodle? Is lasagna happier than noodles? Happier or not, they were born to die just like every living thing.
I woke up relieved to be human and to have a little more time to think and not be consumed.

Does reality deserve suspiciousness?

I don’t know exactly what is really to tell but we should be suspicious about everything except love.

Do you have a demon?

Do we have a God?

What controls you?

Passion.

Are you a) too soft b) too harsh c) too good for this world?

I am enough.

What is time?

A package of wind.

What do you want to do when you’re old?

I will never become old.

Your favourite word?

The one I can write.

What illusion you like to indulge in?

Life.

For what is it worth fighting for?

Love.


Biography
Elen Braga is a Brazilian artist living and working in Antwerp. She works with a variety of mediums such as video, performance, installation, sculpture and works in public spaces. She has been working with performance for several years as a way to create stories for herself and explores how myths, codes and aspects of mass culture function in relation to an individual's ideas of power, ambition, resistance and resilience. By merging personal histories and political facts, she tries to examine the narrative ways in which we can orient ourselves in the present moment.
Since her arrival in Belgium (2016) and due to the work Elen ou Hubris, she has developed a steadily growing interest in working with textiles. Her recent focus on tapestries is another way of telling stories with images and allegorical schemes, yet this time more focused on retelling history as an act of defiance against official, written history itself.
She is currently represented by Waldburger Wouters gallery in Brussels. Her work has previously been shown at WIELS, KIOSK (Gent), NICC Vitrine, ISELP, CC Strombeek, and KANAL-Centre Pompidou, and in 2022 she was selected to create a permanent installation for the renovated Kaaitheater, to be inaugurated in 2024. She graduated as a post-master at a·pass (Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies) in Brussels in 2018. She was previously in residency at AIR Antwerpen (currently MORPHO) (2016), ISELP (Brussels) (2020) and Buitenplaats Brienenoord (Rotterdam, 2021).

www.elenbraga.com