Elsa Mora is a Cuban born artist living and making work in Los Angeles, California. What drew me to her work was the intimate quality she infuses in her images and sculptures. Her characters and scenes are silent stories and faces, nameless creatures and women looking over their shoulders at you and drawing you in. There is a beautiful natural quality to her pieces, which she maintains through a variety of media. Interestingly, while she makes and sells prints of work, these intricate black and white designs begin as paper cutouts.
I enjoy the handmade look to her pieces as well. She makes use of many different craft materials to make things such as buttons, enamel cameos, porcelain, and paper sculptures which she often incorporates in installations and collages. To me, Elsa Mora's approach of combining human and natural (plant and animal) imagery, such as bees and dragonflies, takes advantage of the inherent symbolism and narrative quality in nature, and comments on the human experience. Her arrangements deal with communities and relationships, memories and experiences.
I particularly like this piece from a 2001 exhibition entitled MUTE. She used handmade porcelain objects that represented an accumulation of her silence about past traumas and experiences in her life. Her presentation consisted of massive photographs of the objects interacting with her body and overlooking a table displaying the porcelain objects themselves, which I thought communicated her personal story very clearly and intimately.
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