Ella den Elzen

Born in Toronto/Canada in 1994.

Ella den Elzen is an artist, curator, and spatial designer based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Waterloo and a Master of Architecture from the McGill University in Montréal, where she also teaches an undergraduate design studio that speculates on alternative archives.

She is currently a fellow within the Inaugural Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) Program at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Washington DC/US, where her research examines the extractive legacies of botanical gardens.

Previously, she worked as a curatorial assistant at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), where she contributed to exhibition projects including Angirramut / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home and Middleground: Siting Dispossession and instructed Contemporary Architectural Theory at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, with a focus on subjectivity and modern property.

Her practice uses exploratory and collaborative modes of making, through writing, image, film, and installation, to explore the politics of the built environment. She often engages archival research alongside oral histories to reveal embodied narratives, investigating themes of migration, extraction, and settler colonialism.

She has exhibited her work internationally at Céline Bureau, Montréal and ACUD Galerie, Berlin/Germany. Her writing has been published by the Journal of Architectural Education, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and Public Parking Journal. She has publicly lectured at Fondation PHI pour l’art contemporain, Montreal and Galerie UQO, Gatineau/Canada.