Eliana Otta
Photo: Nuno Cassola
Eliana Otta is a Peruvian artist living between Athens and Vienna, who inquires about our relations with what is usually called nature, precarious labor in neoliberal, extractivist economies, and gender inequality, intersecting feminism, poetry, and politics. She addresses these issues by creating spaces for sharing intimacy, trust, and curiosity within projects that often involve pedagogical, curatorial, and editorial work. Growing up in a (post?) colonial context and her current migrant experience inform her approach to art as a realm to build up communities and rehearse other possible worlds.
She holds a master’s degree in Cultural Studies and a PhD from the PhD in Practice Program at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her doctoral project, “Lost and Shared: Approaches to collective mourning towards affective and transformative politics,” creates dialogues between theory and affective labor, through collective experiences that connect emotions, critical thinking, body, and space.
Her project, “Asking Trees, Birds, and Ghosts About Future Images and Sounds,” was produced by Pixel, Bytes + Film in 2024 (Austria), while “Virtual Sanctuary for Fertilizing Mourning” was chosen and developed as one of the ‘Seven Prototypes for Eco-Social Renewal’ by Driving the Human in 2021 (Germany). She has exhibited her work in individual and collective exhibitions in cities such as Athens, Barcelona, Cali, Cusco, Madrid, Malmö, New York, London, and Vienna. She is a former resident of Gapado AiR, Capacete, Sommerakademie im Zentrum Paul Klee, Planta Alta, Meer Teillen: Share More, and HAWAPI. She co-founded the artists’ collective Bisagra in Lima and the ecofeminist collective Mouries in Athens and coordinated the curatorial team that made the permanent exhibition at Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social in Lima. She is a yoga practitioner and teacher, a butoh apprentice, and has an eternally amateur DJ alter ego, DJ Flaquita.
Eliana Otta is a participant of the Onassis AiR Extended Research Residencies program for 2025/26.
