Elaine Whittaker

Elaine Whittaker is a Canadian visual artist working at the intersection of art, science, medicine, and ecology. Biology is the basis for her installations, sculptures, paintings, drawings, and digital images. Her artworks incorporate traditional and unconventional materials: paint, pigment, wax, mosquitoes, salt, human and mouse cells, textiles, repurposed fibres, and live microorganisms.

She has exhibited in art and science galleries and museums in North America, Europe, China, South Korea, and Australia. As Artist-in-Residence at the Pelling Laboratory for Augmented Biology (University of Ottawa), she collaborated with scientists to create the artwork Lungs of the Earth. It was exhibited in La Fabrique du Vivant at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2019). She was one of the first Artists-in-Residence with the Ontario Science Centre (2018) in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, creating the installation Skinscape for the science centre’s 50th anniversary. Her work has been featured in art, literary, and medical journals, and in books, including Viral Behaviors: Viruses and Viral Phenomena Across Science, Technology & the Arts by Roberta Buiani (2024), Bio Art: Altered Realities by William Myers (2015), and, On Media, on Technology, On Life: Interviews with Innovators edited by Arthur Clay & Timothy J. Senior (2021). She has been an active member of the Red Head Gallery artist collective since 2004.