Her work

Photography and literary autofiction are Elena's answer to an existential terror of forgetting. With both she embraces the figure of the palimpsest. They are canvases where the present is constantly overwritten by the past. History resurfaces and refuses to vanish: old identities, relationships that fractured, intimacies that didn't last.

Born in Tijuana, at the semiotic clash of cultures and languages, she grew up without the feeling of belonging. As an artist based in Montréal, immersed in a bilingual city where neither of its languages are hers, she circles back to the spaces in-between.

She has kept a journal since she was a teenager. The photography came later, in young adulthood, first on digital and now on film. She lives in constant translation, of her language and of herself. She is captivated by observation and the quiet intimacy of being seen, painfully aware of the transgression of her own gaze: photographing strangers from afar and writing about those close to her. She doesn't soften it: she keeps the imperfections of analog film and strips her prose bare, for a brutal honesty.

She can be reached at elena.jacobo@pm.me.