ELENI ROUMANIS CISNEROS

My work focuses on the family with its moments of vulnerability and the struggles of adults to navigate and define their roles as caretakers and partners. In addition, I am interested in family history and how it informs adults’ identities as they work to shape their children’s identities. I examine these trials through the use of human and animal forms, through painting, printmaking, photographic and digital media.

My most recent watercolor work, Our Father, investigates addiction and how it silently impacts so many families. With addiction often comes heartbreak and extreme vulnerability, all of which can destabilize a family. Breaking addiction requires rewiring the brain, a grueling process that is like learning how to walk again, only more difficult because old patterns must be slowly and painfully disengaged.

In my digital works I construct narratives for parents to use as educational tools for children, through the use of automobile and animal forms. A is for Acura, is a part of a larger project that has been a vehicle through which to learn digital illustration. It allowed me to study animal anatomy, often mixing human and animal features when creating characters. Though the final product is digital I have used textures created through the printmaking process and I’ve used ink on paper to create the linework for the vehicle. This work is playful and includes bright colors that capture children’s attention.

My photographic works often comment on family and societal themes. Father and Child is an intentionally constructed image, in which I examine the world our children will inherit considering our mistreatment of the earth. I think about how we as parents can protect and shield our children from the impending environmental consequences that will alter the earth and humans’ relationship to it. Though this work was created in 2016, it takes on further meaning in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting fear of exposure to this contagious disease. Children and babies have been shielded from, not only the disease, but also other people, the repercussions of which are only now beginning to surface.