Elena Mahno is a ceramic artist who splits her time between Toronto and New York. Born in Moldova, she lived across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus before immigrating to Canada in the late 1990s. Combining her background in visual arts, sciences, and design, Elena embraces clay as her primary medium.

Working in series of 5–7 pieces, each work becomes part of an evolving narrative, where intermediate forms serve as exploratory studies and standalone works. Her intimate, sculptural forms lean towards abstraction, often evoking feminine shapes while avoiding clear representation. Inspired by motifs from her past, such as traditional pinafores symbolizing women's labor, and scientific imagery from her graduate research, she celebrates ambiguity and open-ended possibilities.

Themes of transformation, womanhood, and untaken life paths shape Elena’s practice, as she seeks to illuminate hidden narratives of the human experience. Through the timeless medium of clay, her work reflects on these unseen possibilities with a deep reverence for the material’s inherent symbolism.