Artist Bio
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Contact: eliasmacauleymendel@gmail.com
Instagram: @elimendel
Elias Mendel is a London-born, Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist who creates stop-motion
animations, sculptures, drawings, prints, writing and performance lectures. He deploys this
multifaceted approach to investigate the intersection between dreams, roots, and the abyss,
examining legibility, language, diaspora and belonging. These concerns have emerged from his
investigation into a vast family history and archive that grapples with the aftermath of fascism
and the Holocaust. Mendel engages with this history through my mark-making as well as
working with the archival, researching, cataloguing, and writing. Alongside his artistic practice,
he has a workshop teaching practice, in which he leads arts, archival, and educational
workshops.
Mendel is completing his MFA at the University of Illinois Chicago, and studied history and
politics at the University of Manchester. He spent a year in Berlin after receiving the
Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. The Letters to Yesterday memorial project was developed
there and was exhibited as part of the Casablanca Art Biennale (2021), shortlisted for the John
Ruskin Art Prize in London (2023) and exhibited during his first solo exhibition at the
Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre (2022). Since then, he has exhibited in New
York, Chicago and London.
(Bio photo taken by Erin Myle)