Alicia Piller

Artist Statement:

I think of my sculptures as living systems: accumulations of material, history, memory, and time. Moving between the microscopic and the monumental, my work borrows from cellular biology, geological formations, natural growth, and cosmic structures to consider how individual histories exist within much larger social and environmental systems.

My process begins with material. I work across sculpture, installation, assemblage, photography, and public art, combining recycled and found objects with industrial and organic materials including vinyl, resin, paper, textiles, concrete, steel, plants, photographs, and remnants from previous works. Materials are rarely neutral for me. I am interested in what they have already experienced, what histories they carry, and how their meanings can shift when they are cut, wrapped, layered, repeated, preserved, or combined with something unexpected.

This way of working developed from an early background in painting and anthropology and expanded through years of making sculptural jewelry and garments. Working intimately with the body taught me to think through accumulation, adornment, protection, weight, and transformation. As my practice evolved, these methods expanded outward from the body into increasingly large sculptural environments. The scale may change, but the process remains rooted in building through fragments.

History functions similarly in my work. I often approach a place, event, or period of time as something that can be excavated, dissected, and reconstructed. Photographic images of political events, environmental change, protest, historical figures, and personal experiences become physical materials within the sculptures. Rather than presenting history as a fixed narrative, I layer these fragments together to reveal connections between past and present and to consider how inherited systems continue to shape contemporary life.