Esther Elia

Lives and works in Albuquerque, NM, USA

Artist statement

My work is a mix of sculptural furniture pieces, clothing, and large scale paintings that use family folklore as the basis for understanding mixed ethnicity and the question of how to be Middle-Eastern in diaspora. My work collects oral histories from Assyrian family members stemming from the 1915 Armenian, Assyrian, Greek Genocide, and hopes to create an archive of contemporary history and faces not seen or discussed in the dominant histories. In my new work, I draw from aesthetics referencing the grid of the rug: Persian rugs, kilims, weavings, in which I am speaking about safety, specifically for Middle-Eastern women. Referencing Afghan war rugs, I am bringing the new imagery into the old crafts, my new environment showing up and taking shape in my ancient psyche. The figures are new representations of ancient Assyrian deities -- hybrid creatures, lamassus, chimeras with eagle wings and lion tails, bull bodies, ancient symbols and talismans. These sculptures are gods, idols to be carried around as you wander, speaking to our strength. Their temple is the hamam, a place for womxn to gather outside of the male gaze, the Western gaze, the orientalizing gaze. They are graffitied onto unstable and often crumbling walls, protectors for passersby forced to wander from their homelands. (Esther Elia is a visual artist from Turlock, California. She completed her BFA in Illustration at California College of the Arts, and is currently attending the University of New Mexico working...

Artwork