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.  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.

Aves, the one hundred sewn birds, are relics of my two daughters’ early childhood because they are made out of materials from their outgrown clothes.  They are also a relic of family hiking and camping trips when natural history is observed or collected in the form of discovered fossils, feathers, flora, or deteriorated animal bones or carcass.  As both an artist and a mother, it becomes a personal challenge for me to involve my daughters in my work, and the non-fragility of the “stuffed” birds agree tremendously well with my toddler’s playing method.    

artist bio

Eloisa Guanlao is a multi-disciplinary artist, teacher, and scholar in California.  She attended Carleton College in Minnesota, California State University in Long Beach, and the University of New Mexico for her art and art history training.  Guanlao exhibits nationally and internationally