Artist
Elena Mencarelli
Elena Mencarelli is a polyhedral visual artist. She uses painting, object manipulation, and botanical art as forms of expression, and her work has been exhibited in Perugia and Milan (Italy), Melbourne (Australia), and San Francisco (USA). Between 2013 and 2020 she traveled and lived across South East Asia, Australia, Europe, and the USA — an experience that encouraged her to explore multiple creative practices. Art Nouveau, Surrealism, and Narrative Art inspire her visual language, while Symbolism and Mythology feed her research. In 2016 she completed a Master's Degree in Visual Arts at the DAMS University (Italy), and in 2019 she published an art essay with Mimesis Editore. She worked for Red Poppy Art House as a performance host and art curator from 2016 to 2020.
About the Work
A Different Story by Elena Mencarelli is a powerful multimedia artwork that confronts violence against women through the intersection of folk tradition and contemporary data. The piece weaves together the Italian folk song "Madama Dorè," statistical data from the World Health Organization on gender-based violence, and imagery drawn from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Little Match Girl." By juxtaposing the innocence of children's songs with the stark reality of systemic violence, Mencarelli reveals how cultural narratives — including lullabies and folk songs — can simultaneously perpetuate and resist oppressive power structures. The work is a call to rewrite the stories we inherit.