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Artist Statement:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Exhibitions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Reviews:
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Collections:
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Commissions:
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Elka Amorim Biography:
| Biographical information for Elka Amorim can be found below. The artist may choose what information to display. Sometimes the artist chooses not to display personal information to the general public. |
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Age
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33
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| Gender |
Female
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| Status |
not provided
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| Children |
99
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| Religion |
not provided |
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| Education |
Masters of Fine Arts |
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| Hobbies / Interests |
not provided |
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| Favorite Artistic Medium |
Watercolor
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| Favorite Arthistory Movement |
Dadaism - (1916 - 1924)
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| Favorite Visual Artist |
Frida Kahlo
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| Favorite Work of Art |
not provided
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| Biggest Artistic Inspiration |
not provided |
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| Why Did You Become An Artist |
not provided |
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| Your Personal Biography |
Born in Brasilia in 1975 and raised in Viçosa, a Brazilian city in the green state of Minas Gerais, Elka Amorim showed an early passion and skill for drawing, recalling her artistic efforts as “the only bright, illuminated memories” of her childhood.
At the age of 11, Elka found herself transplanted to West Lafayette, Indiana, where her father, a scientist, came to do research on corn. So began a five-year American uprooting, where she began formal academic art training, won several state-wide competitions, and, as a Brazilian teen in Indiana, endlessly questioned her identity.
After returning to Brazil for her senior year, Elka was accepted into UFMG, one of the top art programs in the country, for “the four most intense, wonderful years of my life…We lived, talked, ate, and experienced art 24 hours a day…collaborating, dressing up, and writing ridiculous manifestos.” In this period of rigorous exploration and production, the artist began to synthesize her diverse obsessions and observations. Incorporating elements of myth, ritual, biology, language, folklore, fertility, and dreams, Elka produces non-linear narratives of hypnotic sensorial richness. The artist unites the material and the spiritual into dreamscapes with archetypal resonance, like pathways to some forgotten, collective knowledge.
In 1998, the Brazilian government awarded Elka the prestigious Apartes Scholarship, which she used to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts at Hunter College in New York. The artist had initially proposed a project on Brazilian folklore, but her focus soon shifted towards more intensely personal, interior landscapes. “Something happened in the strange and anonymous environment of New York, where I was an alien (literally). Maybe because I felt, in a way, free of expectations, and yet completely anonymous, I became more introspective and my work began to reflect more of my intimate life… Stepping away allowed me to view my life, as a scientist studies a new specimen.”
With her mother a scholar of literature, and her father a microbiologist, it is fitting that both science and literature inform Elka’s work. “All the fantastic stories my mother would tell me, [and] my father’s various diagrams and meticulous explanations about everything from how yogurt is made, to how DNA works” have informed a system of interpretation which blurs the line between fact and fiction, logic and fantasy, the material and the spiritual.
Elka has shown her work in New York City, in such places as the Bronx Museum and various galleries, as well as in several countries worldwide. She’s currently represented by two NY galleries; Galeria Galou and Pierogi.
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