Elsa James was born in London, England to parents of Caribbean origin and currently lives and works in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. Elsa came late to studying Fine Art, and in 2005 after completing the HND Fine Art at Havering College, Essex, was invited back to do a ten-month residency where she produced as a final piece Lies Myths & Truths, a 17-minute long video, which has come to be described as a seminal work in her practice. In 2010 she completed the BA (Hons) Fine Art Degree at Chelsea College of Art & Design, gaining First-Class Honours.

As a socially and politically engaged artist, working with performance, installation, video and text, she examines the fluidity of identity, expressing contemporary Britain’s relationship with race, culture and the black body (social and personal). At times, she has used her experience as a mother as a point of reference, helping to frame and explore how she sees Britain within its multicultural construct, and as the emblematic institutional position it takes within the world. Performing to the camera in her video works, in installations and in video-text pieces she unpacks these intersections of race, identity, place and culture, as a means of directly confronting the viewer with the perceived problem of the image she has (re)created. More recently, she has shifted towards a focus on involving diverse networks of people to enrich her work, with a view of making collaboration and participation a part of her practice. An outcome of this will be starting the Participatory and Community Arts Masters Programme at Goldsmiths College, University of London this September, and, the co-running of TIME Projects, a new artist-led initiative with artist Sarah Buckle.