Elena Kristofor
Elena Kristofor (b. 1983, Odesa, Ukraine) is a Vienna-based visual artist working with photography, installation, and site-specific interventions. With a background in architecture and photography, she explores the experience of space and the boundaries between two- and three-dimensionality. Her practice reflects on the confrontation between steppe and forest landscapes and addresses themes of foreignness, threat, displacement, and identity.
Kristofor studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. She combines photography, drawing, and sculptural elements to articulate deeply personal reflections on perception and space.
Selected exhibitions include Wilderness Alliances, the Klima Biennale, Vienna (2024); Shaping the Future – Now!, the Austrian Cultural Forum Beijing, Guangzhou (2023); In Translation – The Contexts of Nature, the Sea World Culture & Arts Center, Shenzhen (2022); With View to the Sea, the Museum of Western and Eastern Art, Odesa (2019); Fashion Moments. Female Photographers in Focus, the Landesgalerie Linz (2019); The Censored Exhibition, Photo City, Copenhagen (2018); and Only Human, the Austrian Cultural Forum London (2017).
AS A GERANIUM RED
2025
Canvas, paper, ink, glass, photography
Canvas, paper, ink, glass, photography
The work of artist Elena Kristofor examines human intervention in the landscape, a central theme of the Anthropocene. Her own personal history of migration, together with the related questions of home and belonging, forms the starting point for her artistic exploration.
Geraniums play a significant role in the new project she has created for the exhibition. This homonymous flower is common in Austria, and for many people symbolises home, tradition and family comfort. And yet in Elena Kristofor’s homeland, Ukraine, ‘Geranium’ has a completely different and more serious meaning: it is the name of a Russian attack drone employed in bombing and destroying the country. Her work considers the ambivalence of the geranium, and combines aerial photographs from her own archive with cartography while the drones themselves write poetry.