Elaina Florence Joy

Lives and works in Sacramento, CA, USA

Artist statement

My practice moves through cycles of pursuing perfection and inevitable failure. I’m drawn to the devotional and operatic: to high-church aesthetics, teenage melodrama, and the shame of wanting. My work spans paintings and fictional written works exploring the emotional landscape of adolescence and second adolescence, especially through the lens of American girlhood, neurodivergence, popular culture, and the tangled influence of white evangelical culture. The consequential repression of my upbringing has made the mind the only space for self discovery for most of my life. I am interested in seeing what new work unfolds as I work hard to bridge those spaces. Much of my work takes place within the psychic landscape of the bedroom—an enclosed space where internal dramas play out on a grand, theatrical scale. I treat the intensely private and often humiliating experiences of emotional development with the same seriousness as an operatic aria or epic poem. Across text, fabric, neon, sound, and collected materials, I explore the tension between sincerity and performance, the sacred and the profane, the holy and the horny. Influenced by ghost stories, classical music, video games, film, and romance novels, my lexicon is unruly and highly saturated. I use vivid colors, theatrical staging, and unmoored visuals to reflect the liminal, shape-shifting nature of the mind. Whether referencing the heightened emotions of a teen bedroom or the quiet devastation of adult reinvention, my work...

Artwork