What We Fund

2024 | New Orleans, LA

Materials: Polyurea, steel, polystyrene, powder coated aluminum

Courtesy of the Artist and Ferrara Showman Gallery

About the Artist

Anastasia Pelias was born in New Orleans to a Greek immigrant mother and a first-generation Greek-American father. Pelias creates art that is intimately rooted in the present and deeply evocative of the past. Her art draws from a vast well of Ancient Greek traditions, honors the timeless presence of the divine feminine, and serves as a conduit for healing. Throughout her practice, Pelias is known for weaving her New Orleans upbringing with her Greek heritage to create monumental artworks that transcend time and space and speak to universal truths about the feminine experience. ViVa (& the whole garden will bow) takes its name from a book of poetry by E. E. Cummings. The poem, “If there are any heavens,” elegantly acknowledges and celebrates the specific strength and courage that mothers possess. The monumental sculpture is a matriarchal beacon for those in search of respite and embodies female power.

Anastasia Pelias has exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. Her work is held in the permanent collections at Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, Newcomb Art Museum, and McNay Art Museum. Pelias’ work has been featured in notable exhibitions including The Whole Drum Will Sound: Women in Southern Abstraction at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women of Louisiana, which originated at Newcomb Art Museum and traveled to the Ford Foundation in New York City. In 2020, Pelias was an Artist in Residence at the Joan Mitchell Center. In 2021-2022, she was a selected artist in the Prospect.5 Triennial and was a recipient of a Mellon Foundation Monuments Grant for her site-specific multi-sensory installation, It was my pleasure.