Installation with paper and video projection
84” h x 78 ” w x 200” d
Still from digital video documentary
Installation with piña and bamboo
144” h x 200” w x 200” d
Installation hologram, tintype, and aluminum
150” h x 150” w x 150” d
Installation with ambrotype and wood
54” h x 12” w x 12” d
Artist Statement
As an artist and ecologically-minded humanist I am interested in performing history and historiography through visual means, giving careful consideration to the materials I use. Concerns about the unexamined expansion of technology and the unrestrained use of natural resources inform my art practice and historical inquiry. This includes a scrutiny of the impact of technological innovations on labor migrations, colonial acts, and socio-cultural development. My work traces the creation of institutional and symbolic systems as different factions scramble for control, and the ways these systems contribute to or disrupt community relations. More broadly, I want to reveal the link between compassion and environmental justice, and specifically, I would like to identify who benefits and who suffers. To begin a dialogue regarding my concerns I am experimenting with spatial structures combined with photographic imagery that become performance spaces for the public. Within these structures the public enact and reflect upon their role as producers and consumers of culture and society. I reconsider space as subjective sites to be reclaimed for socio-political interaction and creative engagement. My approach to art comes from the perspective that our cultural environment shapes our socio-economic and political history and identity, but this perspective should not come to the detriment of the natural environment. As a human made product, culture can be unmade, and transformed for the welfare of circadian cycles and natural, biological systems.
Education
2011-2013 Masters-Track Art History, California State University Long Beach, CA
2007 MFA University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
1998 BA Carleton College, Northfield, MN
1996 Lacoste School of Arts, Lacoste, France
Bio
Eloisa Guanlao was born in the Philippines. Her significant experiences as an immigrant and nomadic scholar-artist influence her versatile art practice and critical inquiries. Eloisa’s interest in the natural world, history, art, and literature began at an early age. This multifaceted passion was nurtured at the Los Angeles High School for the Arts in California, cultivated with a liberal arts education at Carleton College in Minnesota, and further developed at the University of New Mexico, where she received her MFA in Studio Art.
Because Eloisa considers art making a social and cultural endeavor, she pursues projects that are research intensive and relevant to current issues. In her efforts Eloisa has been awarded multiple research and travel grants from the University of New Mexico, and recognition by the International Sculpture Center. She was bestowed the prestigious SECAC Fellowship in 2016.
A dedicated scholar, Eloisa has taught at secondary schools and universities in Hawai’i, California, Maryland, and Alabama, where students and colleagues appreciated her dedication to interdisciplinary learning and pedagogy. Eloisa lives and works in California.
Contact Email
Website