The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program
New Member Artists 2024
EFA Studio Program Welcomes Six New Member Artists
Annette Cords work spans diverse media, from painting and weaving to installation and sculpture. Cords probes the possibilities of mark-making, examines writing systems and vernacular styles, and asks how we process and interpret visual information. For Cords, weaving is a multi-faceted and nuanced form of expression that overlaps and augments developments in writing, painting, and abstraction.
Camille Eskell has explored self-perception, societal attitudes, and psychological states related to gender bias in her work. As a first-generation American and the youngest of three daughters from a Middle Eastern Iraqi-Jewish family from Bombay (Mumbai), Eskell’s purpose has been to examine her cultural history and familial heritage through a feminist lens in her latest work. For Eskell, the converging of these three ancient societies compounded the underlying disparagement of women they shared, and deeply impacted her as it played out in the family dynamic.
Initially inspired by the scales that cover butterfly wings, early iterations of Kate Hopkins’s work dives into the innate calming and grounding physiological effects of biophilic patterns. Her recent work explores the textile-like quality of the paintings, as well as the similarity in process and labor inherent in mediums such as weaving, quilting, and embroidery. Hopkins has become curious about the (for better or for worse) long-associated attributes of kindness, social-activism and altruism with craft movements.
Cecil Howell’s drawings of deeply ordinary objects include shadows captured in fleeting compositions. She is looking at a rock, green with lichen, bulbous in form, large as a whale. The pieces lend importance to the accumulation of subtle shifts that make our days, but also speak to the fragility of our time; with a gust of wind everything changes.
In Negin Mahzoun’s artistic practice, she delves into the realms of observation, memory, and gender, weaving a narrative that intertwines personal experiences with cultural identity. Central to her exploration is the nuanced perspective of the woman's body—simultaneously object and subject—examined through the lenses of self-portraiture, layered history, and literature. Mahzoun uses images in miniature paintings as a reference for self-portraits.
Regina Parra’s early research focused on colonialism and the lasting injustices of patriarchy and capitalism in Brazil. She produces works that ask the viewer to rethink official narratives by focusing on the marks left on those who have been forgotten, subjugated, enslaved, and exploited. Painting, performance, and video are Parra’s main poetic instruments to address issues such related to the female body, its pleasure, freedom, and vivid insubordination.
