Elena Shkvarkina

Elena Shkvarkina (b. 1988, Russia) is a Russian-British multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in London. Her practice spans painting, sound, performance, film, and sculpture, weaving together material and immaterial languages into a singular, ritually charged body of work.

Shkvarkina's artistic inquiry is rooted in the relationship between the body, memory, and ancestral knowledge. Her performances,Windmill and Litany for Ancestral Healing, explore the concept of painting with sound, incorporating ritual and movement as transformative pathways for healing. The works locate the artist's body at the threshold between the personal and the collective, the visible and the unseen.

Her paintings extend this investigation into material form — layering texture, mark, and gesture in compositions that resist easy resolution. Shkvarkina invites the viewer not merely to observe but to attend, allowing perception to slow and meaning to accumulate over time.

She completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2025. Her works have been shown at Messums West, RCA Battersea, Ugly Duck, Hypha HQ, and other venues across London, and she has co-curated several exhibitions and interdisciplinary projects.