curator, writer, researcher

about

Elena Wise is an independent curator, writer, and researcher currently based in Amsterdam and Berlin. She has professional and academic experience in the fields of cultural heritage, art history, museology, ethnographic research and textile design. She recently completed a one-year placement as Curator in Training at the Textile Museum in Tilburg, Netherlands, where she worked on a number of exhibitions and projects about contemporary and historical textile art and design.

In her research, Elena is interested in how artists and heritage institutions engage with traditional craft techniques and cultural memory to address current social issues and imagine alternative futures. She approaches her research and curatorial practice through engagement with intersectional, decolonial, queer, and ecofeminist theories. Her Master’s thesis project, Queering Craft in the Baltics, aims to investigate the ways queer artists and activists from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia engage with craft, folklore and ‘national’ traditions in order to formulate an alternative vision and archive of queer Baltic pasts, presents, and futures.