Elizabeth Englander
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2023
1988
United States
Theta
Elizabeth Englander renders figurative sculptures in idiosyncratic material choices that stem from rigorous art historical research. She dives deep into studies of icons throughout history and expressively reconstructs their forms using ephemera from everyday life. Englander’s remodelings of icons—like a Diana archer composed of her late mother’s often reused ribbons, or a wire-mesh body of crucified Christ with skin stitched painstakingly from old bathing suits, or Hindu/Buddhist yoginis built out of dismembered wooden Nutcrackers and old furniture––attempt dialogues between disparate histories, mediated through sculptural poses related to suffering, growth, sexuality, enlightenment, and renewal.
Built upon the bases of the nutcrackers she dismembered for her Yogini series, Elizabeth Englander’s latest sculptures are modeled after standing Jain icons and a Hindu icon of the Supreme Goddess as Void. The reborn figures are assembled from nutcracker parts, used furniture, and post-consumer scraps–and in one case, cast in bronze. With this new series of folk-pop interpretations of Jinas, Bahubalis, and Voidesses, the artist offers her versions of icons manifesting the path through emptiness toward liberating insight.
