"Eli Cortiñas most recent video, here presented in its first version, is about the politics of images and their social and political impact. Titled Not Gone With The Wind, the video adopts the form of a collage made of found sequences taken from Hollywood cinema, television series, advertising, Ted Talks and YouTube videos. The work owes its name to the almost eponymous 1939 civil war epic film, Gone with the Wind, which recently sparked a controversy after HBO Max temporarily pulled the film from its streaming service, for its racist depiction of black people. A simple, poetic addition, the “Not” appended to the original title, appears as a denunciation of the long Hollywood tradition which consists in representing toxic stereotypes, and getting away with it. As a result, the persistence in misrepresentation in mainstream cinema has contributed and still contributes to reinforce misleading historical narratives. In her video, the artist rightly asks “who owns the narrative”? In the era of fake news, Covid-fuelled conspiracy theories and global political uprisings, Cortiñas suggests that to save the future, one might have to re-asses the past. With a very precise succession of moving image sequences and quotes referring to the current regime of idea, the video reveals how fear and mass media's complicity reinforces hegemonic policies.”
 
Elise Lammer, September 2020

Eli Cortiñas, born 1979 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, lives and works in Berlin. A large part of Cortiñas’ practice revolves around the idea of challenging cinematic memory through analyzing and re-editing pre-existing footage, or her material. Disrupting and re-structuring narrative flows creates shifts of meaning (No Place Like Home, 2006). This method of ‘editing as writing’ generates a mixed feeling of both identification and alienation. In her videos and in her collages and object arrangements, Eli Cortiñas creates ambiguous and affirmative transparency – unveiling the role plays of a generation vaunted in the media as ‘lost’.

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Eli Cortiñas studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and the European Film College Ebeltoft, Denmark. Selected solo exhibitions include Always bite the hand that feeds you at Convent Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent (2018), Remixers never die, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2018), Five Easy Pieces, and Some Words of Wisdom at Soy Capitán, Berlin (2015), Awkward Studies and a Decent Take on Serious Matters at Rokeby, London (2013), Love Is Worn Around The Neck, curated by Veit Loers at Kunstraum Innsbruck (2012). Her work was part of several group exhibitions, such as Büro komplex – Die Kunst der Artothek im politischen Raum, Kunsthaus NRW, Aachen (2018), Film Footage Fotografie. Bildnerische Augenblicke mit filmischen Bezügen, Museum for Photographie Braunschweig (2017), 10 Emerging Artists. Contemporary Experimental Films and Video Art from Germany, Goethe Institute Canada (2017), Double Feature, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2017), Les Rencontres Internationales at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011). Eli Cortiñas has been awarded with grants and fellowships from Berliner Senat (2017), Villa Sträuli (2017), Villa Massimo Rome (2014), Marianna Ingenwerth-Stiftung grant for residency at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo La Regenta (2013), Shortlist Award for young Film Art, Freunde der Neuen Nationalgalerie und Deutscher Filmakademie (2011), et al.