Elena Taviani is an Italian visual artist based in Cape Verde. Her work explores the relationships between nature and the human body, spatial justice and memory, intimacy and vulnerability.
With a background in Architecture and a PhD in Urban Studies, her artistic practice developed later in life, intensifying after the birth of her second child in 2022. What began as a self-therapeutic process gradually evolved into her main expressive language: a figurative and colorful visual world rooted in emotion, intuition and lived experience.

Working from her home studio in Praia, she primarily paints with acrylics and oils, while continuously experimenting with watercolors, mixed media and natural elements. Her works often originate from sudden visions—especially at night—which she translates into quick sketches that fill her notebooks before becoming larger compositions.

A distinctive signature of her practice is the use of dots. These marks enrich the texture and activate the surface of each painting, but they also serve as her final gesture: a way of closing the work and symbolically letting it go.