Esther Elia is a mixed Assyrian/Irish artist from Turlock, California — currently living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work is a mix of sculptural furniture pieces, clothing, and large scale acrylic paintings that use family folklore as the basis for understanding mixed ethnicity and the question of how to be Assyrian in diaspora. It has focused in the past on the refugee experience, and has shifted more recently to trying to document the pursuit of safety. Elia’s past work started from collecting oral histories from Assyrian family members stemming from the 1915 Armenian, Assyrian, Greek Genocide, and is committed to adding to a burgeoning movement of contemporary Assyrian art. In her more recent work, she draws from the grid of the rug and tiling practices to create blocky sculptures that reference Afghan war rugs - just as villages documented unfamiliar Soviet weapons of war in their kilims, she too combines the new with the old, her diasporic environment showing up and taking shape alongside the ancient. The figures are contemporary representations of Assyrian deities -- hybrid creatures, lamassus, chimeras with eagle wings and lion tails, bull bodies, ancient symbols and talismans.