Alicia Piller
Inherited Momentum. Ongoing Ascent.
Vinyl, recycled leather, photos on paper: Octavia Butler, magnifying glass, screen, 3-D printed parts, wood, metal, acrylic paint, resin, abalone shell, tile, clock spring, quartz, paper, beads, plastic, rebar, mirror.
86” h x 67”w x 10”d
Artist Statement
My work draws from the structures of cellular biology to locate the root of human histories, using material as both subject and language. Through sculpture and installation, I construct layered systems where macro and micro perspectives collapse, revealing how bodies, environments, and social conditions shape one another over time.
Materiality is central to my process. I work with recycled textiles, industrial fragments, xeroxed imagery, resin, latex, and natural elements, combining them through acts of wrapping, binding, casting, and accumulation. These materials carry memory. They are cut, braided, and encased into membrane-like forms that build into larger organisms. Each work becomes a physical manifestation of thought, memory, and historical residue, suspended between construction and decay.
My practice is grounded in craft traditions passed through my African American maternal lineage and an ethic of repair inherited from my Jewish American paternal background. These influences shape my approach to sculpture as a site of transformation, where inherited knowledge and lived experience converge. My background in painting and anthropology further informs an ongoing engagement with global craft, material culture, and systems of meaning.
Increasingly, my work expands into immersive and suspended environments. These installations function as porous ecosystems, allowing viewers to move around and through them, encountering forms that shift between the bodily, the architectural, and the cosmic.
Across my practice, I investigate trauma, adaptation, and repair. The work holds rupture alongside resilience, proposing new ways of understanding how histories are metabolized and carried forward through material form.
Discount for SCIART Members
