Elena Tejada-Herrera

Elena Tejada-Herrera is a trans-disciplinary artist who was born in Peru and became known for her work in performance and multidisciplinary arts. Her work promotes the participation of the public.

Elena Tejada-Herrera began her artistic education in the mid-1990s, initially studying painting at the Arts Department at Pontificia Universidad del Peru, but attained public attention in a controversial way. She became known within the Peruvian art scene at the end of the 90’s thanks to her performance and multimedia works related to the Peruvian socio economical context, marginal urban cultural expressions and popular culture. Since then she has proposed diverse reflections about the female body and gender constructions with her works. Her works are disinhibited, unapologetic, and scape the normative criteria that characterizes Peruvian contemporary art in general. During the last 15 years her works have generated situations that promote public participation and the realization of collective aesthetic experiences.

Elena Tejada-Herrera became known as a painter, but got great attention because of her performance art work. In 1999 Tejada-Herrera presented her video performance Bomba and the Bataclana in the Belly Dance in which the artist appeared as a cabaret dancer along with street sellers that she hired to perform with her. This piece dealt with the body, gender constructions, and incorporated the participation of the public. The artist was awarded the first prize in the art contest Passport for an Artist for this artwork.

From 2002 to 2006, while living in Virginia, Tejada-Herrera focused each time more on pieces that incorporated the participation of the public, like the series Paper Animals, Holding the House Together, One Day Around The Neighborhood Choreographing My Dance. For this piece Tejada-Herrera asked strangers on stores, and in her neighborhood, to teach her how to dance and to choreograph her. Simultaneously she carried on landscape interventions on highways that addressed the drivers as her audience. Other pieces were performances interventions in malls and different public spaces

In 2007 Tejada-Herrera was selected to represent Peru at the Nipon International Performance Festival (NIPAF). Her participation consisted of a long distance telephone performance. For this event Tejada-Herrera called random numbers from the telephone books from the cities of Tokyo, and Nagoya. Her conversations with strangers related to the situation of women immigrants in Japan. Tejada-Herrera continued with these long distance telephone performances with Canada, and with Peru. In Peru she presented an installation that included a phone from which the audience could hear her long distance recorded conversations with her mother.

The same year she participated as a feature artist at PerformIt in Tucson Arizona, organized by the Plugged Art Collective. Her participation included the performances The Teasing Monkey, Gallery Security, What Would It Take to leave Every Thing Behind, Acts of Love, Grooming Me, and Always Up. Also in 2007 Elena was awarded the Grand Prix for her performances at the Parnu Performance Festival, in Estonia.

In 2008 Tejada-Herrera presented the exhibition "About You" at Dean Project Gallery in Long Island City Queens, New York. This exhibition started with street performances for which Tejada-Herrera invited passers by to participate. The performances included conversations, video portraits, and ephemeral performances made with the body among others. The passers by and witnesses were invited to the gallery to write their experiences and about their days. The exhibition opened with a video projection of the performance of the day and the first writings by the public on the gallery walls. Little by little, the walls were filled with texts. On a Sunday, Tejada-Herrera invited the public outside the gallery to enter and to paint on the walls. This was their day, in which the passers by painted and exhibited their creations within Tejada-Herrera's exhibition. At the closing reception, more video documentation of the performances made by Tejada-Herrera with the public and photographs were added. These were displayed in between the texts and paintings made by the public.

In 2009 Tejada-Herrera traveled to Lima, Peru where she was invited to create an artwork at the Peruvian National Library. Elena Tejada-Herrera was granted permission to create artworks with the librarians during their working hours. Tejada-Herrera invited the librarians to bring their hobbies to their offices, and to participate within video art pieces. Tejada-Herrera also brought an approach with which she was working for many years since her first stay in Virginia, USA. This approach consisted of working within people's homes, like in the piece Paper Animals, and One Day at the Neighborhood Choreographing My Dance. The piece created within this process was Art Delivery realized with the librarian Nelly Bobbio. The resulting artwork is a video art piece with the librarian's voice over. This voice over explained the detail of her practice as a librarian while in the video she is performing a sculpture using her body and the furniture in her house. This piece features what Tejada-Herrera calls cultural exchanges, approach in which Tejada-Herrera explains her art practice to the participant who then she invites to interpret from his/her own perspective using the materials at hand. In this case the materials were the domestic furniture. The exhibition presented several video screens placed on top of wooden library furniture. There were huge amounts of shredded paper coming out of the furniture drawers on to the floor, covering big areas. The videos displayed the librarians executing their hobbies and expressing their opinions. There were librarians acting in front of the camera, singing solo and in group. There were librarians singing a serenata for a sanitation worker at the library. Another librarian sang karaoke in front of his co-workers. In a video piece a librarian was working while shredded paper covered him and his whole office. A librarian performed his normal regular duties as a librarian on a desk inside the gallery while he listened at his favorite music, and Tejada-Herrera served him coffee and his favorite snacks.

Back in the United States, Tejada-Herrera presented several art installations made in collaboration with office workers that facilitated the shredded paper that they collected for 15 days. These installations were presented at Miami International University. One of these pieces consisted of giant plastic bags filled with huge amounts of shredded paper. The other installation was a shelf from which colorful shredded paper fell like a waterfall on the floor. The installation ended with a participative performance with the workers.

In 2010 Tejada-Herrera participated in a residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts. Within this, Tejada-Herrera created several photo and video series.

In 2010 Tejada-Herrera traveled to Huancayo in Peru where she co-led a workshop along with the architect Alberto Tejada Herrera. The workshop was part of the CONEA, (Congreso Nacional de Estudiantes de Arquitectura) (National Peruvian Congress of Architectural Students). in this workshop the students created architectural installations on public parks in the area. These were a playground and a bus stop.

The following years Tejada-Herrera realized several video art works with the subject of the male body and sexuality from a woman's point of view. Her works included a homage to the artist Giuseppe Campuzano.

Since 2011 Tejada-Herrera returned to some object based art making, creating room sized installations and conceptual landscape interventions in the United States and Europe, including Chicago and Prague.

In 2015 Tejada-Herrera presented an exhibition as part of 2nd Floor Rear, in which she invited the public to create costumes, sculptures, and art installations using the lines that she previously made with objects for the room sized installation Lengths of Consumption. The piece called "Playtime is About You" started with video projections of Zumba tutorials. After warming up the public was invited to play and create the collective installation.

Also in 2015 Elena Tejada-Herrera participated at the Chicago Home Theater Festival. The hosts for her site specific project were the artist Faheem Majeed and his wife LaShana Jackson.Just as in former projects, Tejada-Herrera invited her hosts to participate within the artwork. The video piece was presented on the 16th of May at Majeed's and Jackson's home along with the artworks of other local artists from Chicago.

Tejada-Herrera has a continuous presence within the art scene in Chicago, other cities in the United States, and internationally. Her production is a hybrid that blends conceptual approaches, new media, and participative art practices.

Her work is part of the collection of the Museo de Arte de Lima in Peru.