Ellie Cross is an artist from Seattle. After a formal training in art, she got interested in using art as a medium and a tool for curating solutions in order to create a better and just world. Ellie has worked in almost 10 countries and worked with local communities in Malaysia, Thailand, Guatemala, India, El Salvador, Ghana, Nicaragua, Tibet, Cambodia and the U.S.
Ellie, along with the local teams at all these places, created mural paintings on wide array of themes like environmental concerns and sustainable development, gender injustice and a strive towards equality, crippling poverty and art as a medium to learn and express, human trafficking and being salvaged from flesh trade among many others.
In a skype conversation with newsroompost.com, here is what Ellie revealed about her art and her commitments:
Newsroompost: Ellie, thank you so much for joining us. Art, in India is not considered a lucrative vocation and artists abandoning everything and embracing just art for their livelihood is a very brave step. You are from the US and have worked a great deal in various continents and countries. Do you think this kind of marginalisation when it comes to looking at art and giving it its due is a universal phenomenon?
Ellie Cross: Of course, yes. Art is not really a lucrative career option anywhere which is unfortunate given the immense possibilities within art. But i feel, one should follow one’s passion most definitely.
Newsroompost: You have done so much within such a short span of time. How is it that you fund your activities and your work? You were in India for a fair bit of time, for example.
Ellie Cross: I work for a bit, save, travel and work again. This cycle continues to run me and my passions. In India, i was teaching for three years. So, that kind of kept the kitchen running and allowed me to do my work.
Newsroompost: Your concept of marrying social commitment with art is a very beautiful and unique concept especially in times we inhabit where art either exists for ‘art’s sake’, is abstract or is vociferously polemical or political. How and why do you see art as this medium for social change?
Ellie Cross: Art was always my calling. I knew that come what may, i will invest all my energies in art and work herein. It is so wonderful how art grapples with realities all around. You know, you don’t create anything anew. It is all interrogated by what you see around, what you feel and how you respond. Therefore, for me , it is almost impossible to dissociate art and reality or social commitment as you put it. Therefore, art has to and must invade meanings and help create something for a better world.
Newsroompost: So, you feel that art is political? Do you think art should send out messages for world – from the eyes of the artist as poet P.B. Shelley said that ‘poets(artists) are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’
Ellie Cross: You are right. Art can not be a vocation in vacuum. It is very political. In fact, i personally feel that art should always be coupled with acitivism. That it should and must pave way for what’s happening around to what should happen around. Having said that, i also feel that it takes all kinds of artists to change the world. One common formula does not fit in all. Only activist artists can not be credited with the beautiful changes that we see or will see around. So, to go back to what you said, ‘art for art’s sake’ is also important just at Shelleyian idea of art is.
Newsroompost: Ellie, you have worked in 10 countries and have interacted with so many people, cultures, realities, responses and art forms. What do you think has been the most challenging situation by far? And what do you think are the challenges common to working in a dynamic space like this?
Ellie Cross: Cultures, as you said, are different. They created a beautiful dichotomy in my work space. On the one hand, it was amazing to know and absorb so much working with communities in all these different spaces. On the other hand, there was this huge language and cultural barrier that needed to be dealt with – broken and forged – before taking up the work that i envisaged. It took up a large part of my time, to form relationships with people that were conducive enough to come together for work.
Art, the kind which i engage in, is all about community coming together for a common good or goal or reason, or however you put it. For me, creating that condition to be able to create something new was the most challenging. Language, in that respect too, creates a problem.
I remember, in my first project at Mahim, Mumbai, i was so ennerved by the sheer size of population that came up that it was difficult to imagine completing that work(chuckles)…but we did.
Newsroompost: Ellie, you worked in India for a year. How do you see our country and what did you think of its potential, as an artist and acitivist?
Ellie Cross:The one thing which absolutely amazes me about your country is the sheer connectivity within communities. It is a culturally connected community. So, the kind of work i tried to do in India – its potential is huge and unique.
Look at this. The murals in slums and railway stations of Mumbai are now a community asset. It is great to discover that the community took care of its own creation by adding fresh layers of paint to it at regular intervals. That is the reward for community, its power to own and appropriate its space. So, in terms of potential, it huge – this kind of an ownership that incidentally happened through art there.
Newsroompost: Isn’t it similar to your experiences in Tibet?
Ellie Cross: Yes, it is. In fact, Tibet showed me a microcosm of understanding art and how and what it means. I went to Tibet with a preconceived notion. I was cynical and thought that the western influence is consuming the Tibetan world and that it needs protection and preservation. But i was amazed and humbled to find how beautifully they had appropriated the western world view to their own advantage. Tibetans, being the smart people they are, are not just using art forms to preserve their culture but armed with the western ideals are forging new and creative bonds.
Newsroompost: What are issues that are close to your heart. I know you have worked a great deal on various issues and concerns, but what is that one thing that resonates with your commitment?
Ellie Cross: I went to an all girls college. So, for sure, feminism is important to me. But i also feel quite strongly about environmental concerns.
Newsroompost: At the risk of asking you a very political and therefore a personal question, Ellie, i hope you do see some problems that are generated by the US and that has made this kind of ‘grappling with art for a better world’ a necessity. As an American, how do you see this politically?
Ellie Cross: I disagree to what Obama has done in many ways. However, one has to understand that the real problems are structural – Obama or no Obama. Within the US, immigration reforms, prison reforms are very important and need immediate attention. And you are right, the foreign policy of the government which is, by and large, based on aggression, is deeply problematic.
Newsroompost: What projects are keeping you busy these days?
Ellie Cross: I am working on a poetry book that makes use of illustrative art and am working in Chile for murals called Window on the wall.
Newsroompost: Ellie, thank you so much for this beautiful conversation
Ellie Cross: The pleasure was all mine.
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