Elia Alba is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in 1962. Alba was born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx. Although Elia grew up in a time saturated with havoc and racial segregation, she remembers living a quite nice childhood. When Alba was around fifteen years old, her family moved to the Dominican Republic, as a result of the uprising drug epidemics at the time in NYC. This transition was a major culture shock as it exposed Elia to gender stereotyping, socioeconomic statuses, and racism.
“Why aren’t we banding together? Like if we look at the entire….globe it’s… 80% colored somehow. And… like the earth lives in an apartheid, if you think about it.”
Elia Alba, 2021
Elia Alba graduated from Hunter College in 1994, with a Bachelor of Arts. While taking a photography course in the middle of her higher-level education, Elia Alba learned about her love for photography and was led into the art world. As she became more and more passionate, she began to explore other genres of art. Elia’s art has been exhibited across the United States and even abroad, including at Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Madrid and Cuba and has been a recipient of various awards. Among all her several amazing accomplishments, Elia has also published a book based on her project called The Supper Club. Her book was mostly about her observations of famous magazines, like Vanity Fair, only posting white famous individuals. It was frustrating and just something Elia could not understand: How could magazines only photograph white celebrities to be on their covers and magazines, but not people of color? As a result, she reimagined iconic images for her own zine with her great friends, who not only were artists but were people of color. Along with the photoshoots for these iconic images, Elia hosted about forty dinners in total, inviting individuals of color to discuss and share how as a group banded together, they could work through the racial injustice. As of right now, Elia is currently a guest curator at El Museo del Barrio’s current exhibition, Estamos Bien: La Trieanal 20/21, where forty-two masterpieces are in viewing, all by artists of color.
Elia Alba fights strongly for the collective community. She advocates that if all people of color would just band together, we would be able to fight this global apartheid, as she mentions. I love her powerful, positive, strong words. She truly is an exceptional woman.
“ I think, you know,… when you think about the history of the United States, I think it was sometimes in the 20’s or 30’s census, they eliminated this mixing thing…But at the same time that doing that in the census only empowered black people in the United States, because then they stopped looking at themselves as different. I think that’s part of the problem too with Latinos. That, in order for us to really solidify, we need to stop looking at, “Oh, calling myself Latinx, you’re erasing my Mexican identity” or “You’re erasing my Dominican”… no no… that’s not it. It’s like we have to start, for me, thinking collectively in order to have like a force and a presence.”
Elia Alba, 2021
By Krystal Reynoso
WORKS CITED
“El Museo Del Barrio |.” El Museo Del Barrio, www.elmuseo.org/.
“ELIA ALBA.” | Biography, www.eliaalba.net/about/biography.
“ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21 | El Museo Del Barrio.” LA TRIENAL 20/21 |, www.elmuseo.org/la-trienal.
“The Supper Club| ELIA ALBA.” Elia Alba, www.eliaalba.net/the-supper-club/about1.
Elia Alba | Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, April 7). Elia Alba. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elia_Alba.
