GIVING FORM TO THE FORMLESS
2025 - present
Human existence is a medley of invisible forces - time, gravity, entropy, as well as emotions, impulses, memories, and desires. The presence of absence defines all life processes and planetary dynamics - a hungry stomach, an evaporated lake, the need for connection, an ecological niche that hosts evolution. These recent related projects endeavor to give form to the formless.
As an asexual queer person, my identity is often misaligned with absence, rejection, and emptiness. I live with trigeminal neuralgia, a facial pain that is undetectable to others. A combination of poverty and creative nomadism led me to not have a home and live on the road for almost a decade. These dynamics, though often hard, are foundational to my strength and creativity, attuning me to the unseen forces that are in all of our lives. We exist in a spectrum between burden and brawn, loss and resilience. My recent work explores the space between heavy and light, opacity and translucency, layers and singularity.
exhibition
events
drawingS
SCULPTURES
VIDEOS
This project is made possible by support from Xenoform Labs, Playa at Summer Lake, Surel’s Place, and the Norman Bird Sanctuary.
The source never diminishes 2025-2026
exhibition
UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, CO
This three-part solo exhibition, The Source Never Diminishes, featured a broad spectrum of projects that embrace ecological grief with humor, empathy, and mystery. I used sequined trash, breath-based monoprints, and looping video spells to conjure a “dark disco ball” of collapse and transformation. These works imagine human connection to cycles of emergence and extinction, offering a playful yet profound meditation on endings and beginnings. The Source Never Diminishes showcased the breadth of my practice, including selections of never-before-seen work, inviting audiences to engage with my vision of art as a source of resilience, joy, curiosity, and wonder with a call for action in turbulent times. Download the gallery guide here.
Windsocks 2025-present
Rudimentary tools such as windsocks and weather balloons endure as scientific measures for the invisible forces that shape the world around us. Erosion control fabric is meant to keep entropy at bay and yet has been found to poison watersheds with microplastics. I upcycle the fabric in partnership highway departments, sewing windsocks that might be too large to be moved by the wind. My windsocks help give form to the vast mysterious dynamics that shape our lives - gravity, wind, grief, and hope.
the source never diminishes 2025
erosion control fabric sourced from the Utah Department of Transportation, PVC, wire, satin
120 inches x 140 feet
The Source Never Diminishes is inspired by the law of conservation of energy, a fundamental principle in physics which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed... only transformed from one form to another. In Elder’s work, this scientific law becomes a poetic metaphor for resilience, transformation, interconnectedness, and the enduring potential of matter, memory, and meaning. Just as energy shifts from one state to another—light to heat, motion to stillness—Elder’s art explores how grief can become beauty, how destruction can give rise to creation, and how loss can be a source of connection and renewal. Sewn from nearly six miles of upcycled erosion control fabric, and using over ten miles of thread, this sculpture is intended to confound singular viewpoints, and can not be seen from one perspective. Commissioned by the Galleries of Contemporary Art at The University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, this work will be on display for several years in the lobby of the Ent Center for the Arts,
to the center, from the center 2025
Watercolor, gouache, natural pigment, and ink on paper
70+ paintings, each 9 x 12 inches
Evidence of daily meditative practice, these paintings are inspired by early scientific attempts to understand the formation of the Earth.
WAR KITE 2024
Kevlar, satin, cotton, silk, ribbons, ocean polished asphalt, glass prism
120" x 24”
In October 2023, children in a Palestinian refugee camp were given kites and encouraged to go and fly them. The Israeli army bombed them with white phosphorus, and the kite strings became conduits for the chemical that burned many of them to death. I made this kite from remnants of Israeli military uniforms which, like many genocidal weapons, are funded and made by the United States. Like a person flying a kite in a storm, I feel tension and fear for what I am tethered to.
DOING AND undoing 2023
13 minute looping video with sound
Featuring: Connie Zheng, Esy Casey and Nina Elder
Camera: Esy Casey
Sound: Darius Holbert
Bunny Mellon, wife of American Industrialist Paul Mellon, owned a collection of books on witchcraft and spells. Among them, a dog-eared page describes a spell for doing and undoing. Under a full moon, three white virgins are to pass stones from a graveyard from hand to hand, a dozen times in one direction, and then a dozen times in reverse. The Mellon family - responsible for the extraordinary expansion and profiteering of extractive industries, banking, and shipping - were instrumental in the doing of American dominion and the undoing of ecological harmonies. This spell, cast under the full moon at the Mellon Estate, hails a new era of doing and undoing.