My Story

Elena Shaura was born and raised in Russia and is now living and working in France and the

U.K. Architecture and philosophy have always been twin guides in her intellectual

development since she has extensive past experience of working in these areas in academic

and legal fields. Elena’s creative work takes the forms of painting in a variety of media, as

well as novel writing and writing in other prose forms, with the verbal and the visual as

mutually dependent. Her work with the novel form and her latest artwork can be seen as a

parallel process of one creative medium shaping another.

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The current ‘I/Eye Book’ exhibition is part of an ongoing series of projects which reflect an

interdependence of the verbal and the visual. Amongst previous projects, ‘Death of the

Author: Journey of a Manuscript’ is an attempt to illustrate the process whereby an artistic

creation passes from its author to its audience. This project was made into a short film which

was shown at the SIFFA Festival of Poetry, Literature & Art in London in November 2024.

The sensibility behind ‘Death of the Author’ has had considerable influence on ‘I/Eye Book’

and on other projects which reflect the artistic relationships between a creator and what is

created via an intermediary. Another common factor is the creative power of the word and its

representation through visual text and the form of the book. An artist must by necessity move

on from one project to a different one, and preserve the life force in the process, hence these

projects are intended to be seen not as separate entities but part of an ongoing creative cycle.

 

Elena has enjoyed success in the Society of Women Artists Annual Open Exhibition

competition (June 2023) and in the Art in the Age of AI competition (Autumn 2024), and has

exhibited frequently in Paris, London, Berlin, Antibes, Monte Carlo, Luxembourg and

Strasbourg.