Elsa & Johanna

NEWS

Winners of the Grand Paris Express «Tandem» programme for the creation of a permanent work in one of the future metro stations in collaboration with architect Thomas Richez, under the direction of José-Manuel Gonçalvès.
Palace Odyssée exhibition on the platforms of the Champs-Élysées Clemenceau metro station, Paris. Until 2025, during the renovation of the Palais de la découverte.
Winners for the creation of two artistic posters for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Elsa Parra (born 1990) and Johanna Benaïnous (born 1991) have been collaborating since 2014 under the name of the duo Elsa & Johanna.

Working at the crossroads of photography, performance and video, they have been creating visual narratives since their meeting, of which they are the interpreters. The use of autofiction, at the heart of Elsa & Johanna’s work, allows them to stage characters freed from their own identity, questioning the contemporary individual, the notions of self-representation and anonymity.

Their work has been exhibited at the Salon de Montrouge (2016), the MAC/VAL, Paris Photo and the Festival d’Hyères (2019). In 2020, they are finalists for the Prix Découverte Louis Roederer at the Rencontres d’Arles, they are part of the Société Générale Contemporary Art Collection, they are commissioned by the Palais de la Découverte and they are part of the exhibition “Staging Identity” at the MathildenhöheInstitut in Darmstadt alongside Pipilotti Rist and Cindy Shermann.
Their photographs are part of the collections of the CNAP, the Fond d’Acquisition d’Art Contemporain de la ville de Paris and the Société Générale, among others.

In 2021, the artists hold their first retrospective exhibition entitled “The plural life of identity” at the Städtische Galerie in Karlsruhe, Germany.
In 2022 Elsa & Johanna open the Season at the MEP Studio in Paris with an exhibition dedicated to their latest project The Timeless Story of Moormerland, produced in Germany.