Elsa James is a British African-Caribbean artist and activist who grew up in West London and now lives and works in Essex. Her collaborative, research-led practice interrogates constructions of identity, modes of belonging, and the enduring legacies of the British Empire. Working across live performance, moving image, sound collaborations, and text-based works in screenprint and neon, her interdisciplinary approach centres Blackness as a methodology for cultural resistance, speculative inquiry, and critical hope. As a descendant of the Windrush generation, James draws on the complex legacies of migration, displacement, and cultural survival, grounding her work in Caribbean diasporic histories and an intuitive connection to African heritage.
Her most recent body of work, Afro Dada, proposes a conceptual and aesthetic methodology that fuses Afrocentric cultural forms with the Dadaists' politics of refusal. Informed by the theoretical frameworks of Afropessimism, this evolving practice explores rupture, erasure, and the psychic and spatial fragmentation of diasporic Black identity. Through experimental, process-based techniques—including mark-making, collage, and sculpture—Afro Dada performs a deliberate refusal of coherence, positioning disorientation as both a method and a mode of critique.
In 2024, James was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Essex in recognition of her contributions to contemporary art and cultural history in Essex—most notably through her Forgotten Black Essex film series and Black Girl Essex project, which brought national attention to the region’s overlooked Black presence and histories. She was a finalist for the Freelands Award in 2021 with Focal Point Gallery for her debut solo exhibition Othered in a region that has been historically Othered, and a nominated recipient of the Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award in 2023. In 2022, she was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Essex..
Her work is held in both private and public collections, including the UK Government Art Collection and Beecroft Art Gallery, where she became the first Black British artist to be acquired for the gallery's permanent collection.
James is currently undertaking a Master of Research at the Royal College of Art as a recipient of the Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship (2024-26).
