Jonah Elijah

Place: Houston

Born: 1990

Biography:

Jonah Elijah is a native of Houston's Third Ward, Texas. He received his BA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2017 and his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2020. His work transcends time, drawing upon his personal memories and upbringing. Within his narratives, he delves deep into identity, through mediums of portraiture, language, and mass media. Elijah engages with the past, employing found objects charged with meaning, such as sneakers, televisions, and artifacts, as symbolic metaphors for the dynamic experiences they represent. His studio practice has progressed through residencies such as Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Virginia, where he created his Virginia Series, responding to the center’s historical land in the foothills of Blue-ridge Mountains in Amherst & VCCA, France, where he created his reflexion series taking multiple hand held mirrors & painting individual portraits of family & friends from his day to day. Further inviting viewers into his personal narrative, Elijah continues to explore memory and identity. Through this, he highlights the joy within the struggles of being Black in America.