About Elisa

Elisa Markes-Young was born in Poland, moved to Germany at 16, and has been living in Australia since 2002. As a result she feels like she’s placed in a never-ending state of in-betweenness, neither here nor there, never arrived. The questions of who she is and what and where is home are central to her studio practice.

Her work results from a deep-seated feeling of tęsknota - a Polish concept of cultural sorrow often translated as nostalgia. Unlike nostalgia, tęsknota focuses on absence - real or expected - and its pain. It’s the pain of the disconnect between now and then, here and there, presence and absence.

Markes-Young works with textiles. She’s inspired by and embraces the prosaic nature of old techniques and traditional folk craft. The physical form of her work is rooted in manual labour and daily practice. By working with slow, low-tech textile processes she maintains connection to her past. Her work tells small personal stories yet at the same time points to bigger themes. It’s a metaphor about our experience of time and its memory.

Markes-Young has received funding from Regional Art Australia, Regional Arts WA, Australia Council and DLGSC. She was the winner of the inaugural MidWest Art Prize. Her work was included repeatedly in the Bunbury Biennale and the Tamworth Textile Biennial and Triennial. It was published in Mary Schoeser’s”Textiles: The Art of Mankind” (Thames & Hudson, 2012) and is set to appear in a book by Charlotte Vannier profiling a selection of contemporary artists working with thread (Pyramyd Editions, 2025).

Markes-Young lives and works in Margaret River, WA.

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