Elena Bajo

Nominated, Prix COAL 2026 — “The Night”. Shown in Sans Réserve, 4 December 2026 – 10 January 2027, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris.

Three parts: The Olfactory Night Garden, a nocturnal sensory installation navigated without artificial light, where the plants’ released scents compose an olfactory score that shifts with the lunar phases; Arianrhod’s Threshold, a participatory moonlight performance scored by scent, echo and the circumpolar stars, drawn from Celtic, Mediterranean and Andalusi night cosmologies — bodies moving through the dark; and Mapping the Disappearing Night, a research-action with naturalists tracking nocturnal pollinators, extending into an educational program that recovers subjugated forms of ecological knowledge.

In collaboration with live olive and Artemisia. Thirteen bodies in a fractal pattern mirroring the hexagonal geometry of C3A: plaster, red clay, brick, oak, copper, manganese glass, live olive and Artemisia, with sound that amplifies the plant’s bioelectrical signal, bulerías vocals, video and Artemisia scent. The work recovers the erased thirteen-month lunar calendar and the ancestral botanical knowledge of Andalusian and Celtic women. Developed during the C3A artist residency fellowship.

Watch on Vimeo

In collaboration with yarrow and Ordovician marble. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Ordovician marble, quarry residue, UV light. The plant draws calcium from the quarry stone into its own tissue — stone becoming plant, plant becoming stone; a protocol for relational intelligence between geological, botanical and human matter.

In collaboration with Papaver somniferum, geological matter, and algorithmic intelligence. Glazed ceramic poppy heads, soil, asphalt rubble, poppy stems and a Jacquard tapestry. Spheres rise from earth and rubble, poppy stems emerge from their mass, and the excavated ground reads as a wave arrested mid-break.

In collaboration with Papaver somniferum and participating dancers. For two weeks the dancers took a very low microdose tincture of poppy alkaloids and lived alongside the plant, the body acting as a vessel for it to speak in the first person; an Anarchoreographic score of trust between species. Dancers: Astrid Bramming, Mado Dallery, Lauren Runions.

Watch on Vimeo

Plant dye on woven cotton, Jacquard loom, with embedded seeds, leaves, flowers, branches and roots; 138 × 360 cm. Made in collaboration with Datura stramonium and algorithmic intelligence: botanical collage under Datura influence, passed through a neural network, then bound into cloth by the loom with living plant matter in the weave.

More from this project in the full portfolio (PDF)

In collaboration with Elm, Linden, and Morning Glory. Site-specific performative sculpture: elm sprout, reclaimed concrete, reclaimed glass, linden branches, lake stones, sand and water. An elm found sprouting from concrete is the germinal image; seven linden trees, sacred to Freya in Norse cosmology, hold the site as a temporal archive. Continued in 2025 as Freya’s Grove (Eternal Return) Non-Site at Museo Cristóbal Gabarrón, Mula, Murcia, ES.

In collaboration with Cytisus canariensis and participating dancers. A poem written for the volcanic islands, engraved into five large basaltic stones, becomes the score that activates a performance by three dancers — a portal where plant, mineral and deep time converge.

Watch on YouTube

Performative sculpture, installation and video: concrete, polyurethane and reclaimed plastics gathered from urban waters, cast into a field of monumental blocks (9 × 15 × 20 ft). Accompanied by the video work The Land is a Mirror of the Stars.

Watch on Vimeo

In collaboration with the pharmaceutical and plastic residues found in tap water. Mixed media, acrylic, dye, plastic, aluminium and ceramic: a chromatic mapping of water-borne pollutants. Pharmaceutical and plastic residues traced in tap water return as colour — pink for estradiol, green for 2C-B — in an eco-pharmacological forensics where the contaminant is admitted as co-author.