Resist

Encaustic mixed media, 24x36x1, 2017, $1500

Resist represents the first time I was able to integrate my love of film, art and activism into a single piece. I made this piece in the aftermath of the presidential inauguration last year.

I am a creative storyteller. As a mother, I feel compelled to examine my cultural inheritance and legacy.

As I mine these stories I’ve inherited about who I am and where I come from, I use my art to shine a light in the dark corners of half-told truths and shame-filled silence. Art illuminates the complexities of the story—with all its messy, complicated, conflicting truths.

I find beauty in the rusty, weathered and worn. I love the stories that scars hold ~ and feel compelled to take those stories of survival, and turn them into something beautiful to behold.

Eliaichi Kimaro is a self-taught artist who will learn whatever medium it takes to tell the story that is emerging. Over the past 40 years, she has used writing, music, photography, film, storytelling, and now encaustic mixed-media art to explore her personal/family narrative.

Eliaichi has been a COCA Gallery Artist-in-Residence and a Marathon Artist. Last year, she was the recipient of the Artist Trust Fellowship, the CityArtist Grant through Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture, and a scholarship from the International Encaustic Association. Eliaichi has served on numerous non-profit Boards, grant panels, film festival juries, and exhibition planning committees.