About
Elina Pasok is a London-based contemporary artist working across painting, fine-art photography, moving image and sculptural objects. Her practice explores the structures through which living things protect, adapt, connect and recover, moving between microscopic biology, ecology, ritual and human experience.
Cells, coral formations, roots, blood vessels, synapses and branching organic forms recur throughout her work, alongside protective figures and objects. These structures are often rendered through vivid acrylic, fluorescent and iridescent pigments, copper foil and layered surfaces that shift with light.
Alongside painting, Pasok works with photography, film and contemporary votive forms, extending her interest in resilience, protection and interconnectedness across different materials and scales. Her work has been exhibited in London, Birmingham and Sydney, with recognition from the Head On Landscape Prize, Fine Art Photography Awards, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and International Photography Awards. Her moving-image work has also received awards at international film and music-video festivals.
Contact
elinapasok@gmail.com
Artist Statement
My work begins with a fascination for the systems that keep living things alive: cells dividing, synapses firing, coral fluorescing under stress, roots finding their way through soil, bodies repairing themselves.
I am drawn to the visual echoes between these structures — the way a blood vessel can resemble a branch, a dendrite a reef, or a microscopic cellular network a landscape viewed from above. I use these similarities to think about vulnerability, connection, resilience and the strange intelligence of living systems.
That interest is personal as well as visual. My grandmother was a diagnostic cytologist, and some of my earliest encounters with microscopic imagery came through her work. I became fascinated by the idea that something almost impossibly small — a pattern of cells on a glass slide — could contain information about an entire human life. Research often enters my studio before paint does: scientific imagery, anatomy, ecology, folklore, ritual and collected stories become part of the process.
My paintings are built through layers of acrylic, fluorescent and iridescent pigment, texture and, at times, copper foil. The brightness is deliberate. I am interested in optimism not as denial, but as a practice: an active way of paying attention to what persists, repairs and grows even under pressure.
More recently, these questions have moved beyond the canvas. In Relics of Mortal Desire, I rework the logic of ancient votive offerings around contemporary desires that are harder to name — belonging, courage, connection, purpose.
Across objects, still and moving images, I keep returning to protection, transformation and awe — those brief moments when something shifts our perspective and the world suddenly feels larger, stranger and more connected.
Selected Exhibitions
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025
Welcoming Spring — The Space, London, UK
Welcoming Spring — The Space, London, UK
Neon Kinship — Ealing Village Clubhouse, London, UK
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025
Here, Gently — Antepavilion 2025, London, UK
with Eva Kukar
Here, Gently — Antepavilion 2025, London, UK
with Eva Kukar
2020
Identity and Self — Willesden Gallery, London, UK
Identity and Self — Willesden Gallery, London, UK
2018
Photomonth Photo-Open: Women in the 21st Century — The Printspace Gallery, Shoreditch, London, UK
Photomonth Photo-Open: Women in the 21st Century — The Printspace Gallery, Shoreditch, London, UK
Head On Landscape Prize Revisited — Sydney Children’s Hospital, Sydney, Australia
2017
Head On Landscape Prize — NSW Parliament House, Sydney, Australia
Head On Landscape Prize — NSW Parliament House, Sydney, Australia
RBSA Photographic Prize Exhibition — Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Gallery, Birmingham, UK
2014
LCF MA14 — Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, UK
LCF MA14 — Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, UK
2012
24 Hour Party People — Happy Mondays / Warner Music project, Wolf & Badger Gallery, Mayfair, London, UK
24 Hour Party People — Happy Mondays / Warner Music project, Wolf & Badger Gallery, Mayfair, London, UK
Selected Projects
2026
Relics of Mortal Desire — series of handmade contemporary votive objects created for The Shop for Mortals and All Fools, London
Relics of Mortal Desire — series of handmade contemporary votive objects created for The Shop for Mortals and All Fools, London
Awards + Distinctions
2023
Counting Fireworks — Best Music Video awards at London Global Short Film Festival, Rome Music Video Awards, International Sound Future Awards and Europe Music Video Awards
Counting Fireworks — Best Music Video awards at London Global Short Film Festival, Rome Music Video Awards, International Sound Future Awards and Europe Music Video Awards
2019
International Photography Awards — Honourable Mention, Deeper Perspective Professional Category, Breathe! (Act now to save our future)
International Photography Awards — Honourable Mention, Deeper Perspective Professional Category, Breathe! (Act now to save our future)
Associate of the Royal Photographic Society — ARPS
2018
Fine Art Photography Awards — Professional Fine Art nominee, Modern Gods series
Fine Art Photography Awards — Professional Fine Art nominee, Modern Gods series
2017
Great Art Prize — Photographic Prize, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists
Great Art Prize — Photographic Prize, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists
Head On Landscape Prize — Finalist
Education
MA Fashion Photography
London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London
London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London
BA Audio-Visual Media
Baltic Film and Media School, Tallinn University
Baltic Film and Media School, Tallinn University