Elisa Insua

Elisa Insua grew up absorbed with craft-making, and by age 16 started compiling objects into mosaic-like assemblages. Deemed useless to their prior owners, Elisa decided to breathe new life into them through her creative practice. By studying economics and business, as opposed to fine art, enabled the artist to learn more about capitalism and its ramifications on the modern world. This would later prove to be a great inspiration in her work, such as in Big One Dollar Bill, 2013. With her unique perspective and wealth of knowledge, Insua’s work links economic theory with discarded consumers’ objects.

Self-taught, Insua’s practice sits at the intersection of Argentinian Arte Povera and Pop Art. The acts of appropriation and reusing serve as the bedrock of comments on our society, specifically looking at need, greed, trend and obsolescence. Through her practice, Insua thought about sustainability before it became a global awareness and advocated for a more responsible way of consuming. Today, she works in collaboration with cooperatives to collect donated scraps. From financial value to emotional value, Insua is also interested in how we relate to these objects and artefacts and what they might say about us as individuals or as a society.

In line with her education, most of Insua’s projects start with notebooks filled with sketches and diagrams where she brings economic theories to life in visual and embossed forms. All her pieces take up to a month of careful composition and combination. Insua states “I paint with objects”, highlighting her attention to colour and shapes. Inspired by the aesthetics of advertising or the symbols of power, such as gold, shine, and ornaments, she uses their attractive effect as a strategy to trigger questions in the viewer: do we need more? What’s the limit of our satisfaction? What use is (more) gain? Why do we desire wealth?

More recently, Insua has also been experimenting with 3D modelling and augmented reality to continue her conversation about energy and ecology and their effect on the climate. Insua uses irony and playfulness to make us reflect on society’s state and future, with humour working as a way to cope with reality.