Alicia Piller

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Cutting the Thorns in My Side

29"H X 15.25"W X 3"D

Vinyl, recycled paper, metal, gel medium, machete (Guatemala), digital photography (Roses: Inglewood, CA, Model: Grief Girl, destroying a previous work, 'The Golden Cage of America').

2020

Courtesy Alicia Piller


“Strength of mind, body, spirit, through balance, and release from the past.

For this work I utilized a personal power symbol, imagery from a previous art collaboration; (model) ‘Grief Girl’ destroying the sculptural work, (Golden Cage of America), using a samurai sword. Here I am echoing the samurai sword energy by incorporating a real machete, owned by my late paternal grandfather. Slashing away the past: negative institutions and people.”

 

Alicia Piller is a Los Angeles based artist. She was born and raised in Chicago and received her Bachelors in both Fine Arts (Painting) & Anthropology from Rutgers University in 2004. While working in the fashion industry; living a decade in NYC and three and a half years in Santa Fe, NM, Piller cultivated her distinctive sculptural voice. Continuing to expand her artistic practice, Alicia completed her MFA focused on sculpture and installation from Calarts in May of 2019. 

As a method to locate the root of human histories, Alicia merges the new and discarded, experimenting with of a wide range of materials to construct large scale works that mimic forms of cellular biology. Piller envisions historical traumas, both political and environmental, through the lens of a microscope. Piller’s mixed media practice is as much about materiality as it is about content. Attempting to reconcile questions about the current state of our times; she works on a macro/micro level, breathing life into materials that have been removed from their ‘natural’ environment. Manipulating things like resin and latex balloons (stemming from her background as a clown ); each work becomes a biological unfolding of time, examining the energy around wounds societies have inflicted upon themselves and others.

Here work can be found here.