“As an artist, what can I do? Like what’s possible? How can I instrumentalize my activity, my vision, my role and make things happen instead of working with art history as my goal?”
Artists and Rights, Episode 3: Weaving Tight Enough: Forming Solidarities and “Fixing” the Situation
Elana Mann creates artwork that brings a greater consciousness to the listening and speaking we practice in everyday life in order to foster equity, empathy, and justice. Her projects bridge sculpture, performance, public engagement, and politics. Mann’s work examines the personal and the political simultaneously, asking viewers to be listeners, hearing themselves and each other. Mann often collaborates with musicians, activists, and organizers, creating objects and sounds that reflect the communities in which she works. In addition, Mann curates, organizes, and writes, most recently, co-editing, with John Burtle, the 2018 performance score anthology Propositional Attitudes: What do we do now?, published by Golden Spike Press. Mann lives in South Pasadena with her partner and their two kids.
Selected Works
Elana Mann, Take a Stand Marching Band, 2017. Twenty sculptures and performers, documentation of May Day March in downtown Los Angeles. Photo: Nick Popkey.
Elana Mann, #me-too-rattle-battle (F.U.J.M.+S.S.), from the blame-game rattle series, 2018. Ceramic, wood, glass, 6 in. x 9 in. x 16 in. Photo: Michael Underwood.
Elana Mann, No! (Unidentified Bright Object #1), 2019. Ceramic, glass, wood, documentation from “Never Again is Now” protest at the Japanese American National Museum, June 27, 2019. Photo by the artist.