Elia Alba
Page 1 | 2 | Biography
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tourists (chiloe), 2005 c-print
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The masks are both portraits and substitute heads. These are created through a photo-transfer process on fabric that when worn present a distorted face. The masks present alternative personas that form a mix of identities that enact various rituals that question the artificial roles we take on in our relationship with others. In the photographs, people grant themselves a position of certainty based on the daily routines they inhabit, yet these are not comforting, because in their strangeness they display a world, which is full of contradictions and ambiguity.
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men's room, 2006 B&W print
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"...Alba’s brilliant offering, including The Men’s Room and Masks, which feature the gorgeous visage of the famed DJ at the Paradise Garage, Larry Levan, exceeds the equation of disco with easy gay sex and focuses our attention instead on the movement’s promise that anyone could adopt the mask and become a stone cold sexy disco fox."..... Susan Ross, New York Arts, 2006
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Larry Levan (jack daniels), 2006, c-print
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sunnyside gardens (butterfly), 2006 c-print
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Queens (pixie) 2006, c-print
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Elia Alba is a multi-media artist, working in sculpture, photography and video. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College in 1994 where she graduated magna cum laude and she also attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Her work has been exhibited and screened at various national and international institutions and fairs, for example, The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City, Whitebox, ARCO 2002, ArtBasel Miami, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin,in Paris, Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, Museo de Arte Moderno in the Dominican Republic, the Science Museum in London, El Museo del Barrio in New York City, PHotoEspana 2006 in Madrid and the RISD Museum in Rhode Island. Solo shows include Jersey City Museum in New Jersey and Atlantic TransArt in Chile. Her awards have included the Artists-in-Residence Fellowship from the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum Van Lier Foundation Fellowship, Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Time Out, Urban Latino, Star Ledger, Tema Celeste, and The Guardian. She lives and works in Queens, New York.
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"...Alba, who works with dichotomies of black and white, male and female, best expresses the ambiguities lived not only by her compatriots but by us all."
Francine Koslow Miller,
Tema Celeste, Fall 2005
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The Queens (flag), 2006 c-print
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