Élise Atangana was working for the communications department at the SNCF Foundation when she discovered the Revue noire, an African publication on contemporary art. This discovery was a true revelation: “It was the first time that I saw a visual art that represented me”. She then contacted Simon Njami, co-founder of the magazine and a Cameroonian exhibition curator.

This meeting marked the start of a fruitful collaboration: they worked together, notably during the Havana Biennial in 2006 and for the Venice Biennial in 2007, where they would create the first African Pavilion in the Biennial. Thus began Élise Atangana's career as independent curator and producer of exhibitions.

In 2012, Élise Atangana was the artistic coordinator for the 3rd edition of the Rencontres Picha during the Lubumbashi Biennial in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The exhibition, entitled “Enthusiasm!”, focused on how contemporary art changes our perception of the urban space.

Beginning in 2015, Élise Atangana focused her work on questions of mobility, both spatial (movement from point A to point B) and virtual (within the imaginary). She thus questions the influence the mobility of people and ideas on space, and its consequences for contemporary art.

This theme was at the heart of the "Entry Prohibited to Foreigners” exhibition presented in Sweden in June 2015 under her curation: There, 11 international artists exhibited works representing their idea of mobility.

Élise Atangana is committed to promoting contemporary African art. When working for the Dakar Biennial in 2014, she aimed to strengthen the fundamental position of this event on the African continent, promoting “works by emerging or established artists who have never participated in a biennial before”.

The commissioner for the second Kampala Biennial in Uganda in 2016, she highlighted local artists and discussed the economic and social development that the city was then experiencing.

In 2014 and 2016, she was also invited to be part of the jury of Artes Mundi that supports contemporary global creation in the UK by selecting a new artist to support financially.

From March to May 2018, Élise Atangana presented a new exhibition at the Kadist gallery in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, “This Is Utopia to Some”. This collective international exhibition, bringing together French, American and Kenyan artists, blurred the boundaries between elitist art and popular culture through video installations and still images.