Hello, my name is Elsa Mora. I was born in Holguín, Cuba, where I began my artistic training, which I later continued in Camagüey. Growing up in Cuba profoundly shaped my visual and material sensibility. Living in the United States for the past 25 years has expanded my perspective, allowing me to inhabit multiple cultural references and lived experiences.

In my work, I explore universal themes such as identity, connection, and survival. I am drawn to the tensions between isolation and belonging, as well as between individualism and interdependence. To articulate these ideas, materials such as paper, clay, textiles, and metal are essential to my practice. I understand them as active collaborators that shape both the creative process and the final outcome.

This relationship becomes especially evident in my work with clay, where material transformation is made explicit. Clay, initially soft and fragile, gains strength and permanence when subjected to high temperatures. Fire does not destroy it; it transforms it. This transformation also operates as a metaphor for human experience in the face of extreme conditions. Like clay, crises change us, reshape us, and strengthen our inner core.

The works presented in this exhibition are intimate in both scale and content. The series titled Inventory of Tools for Facing Difficulties is, in a sense, an archive. My intention was to create objects that represent different situations and challenges life presents, as well as the mechanisms we develop to adapt and survive them. Rather than offering solutions, these objects acknowledge our capacity for creativity within the everyday act of survival.

Although the subject matter is rooted in my personal experience, these works are not intended to be confessional. My aim is to create a space for shared recognition. The materials, scale, and handwork become an invitation for viewers to project their own experiences of loss, care, resilience, and recovery.

Taken together, my works in this exhibition offer a landscape of emotional tools, fragments, and traces. They reflect on how we carry what has happened to us, how we find ways to move forward, and how meaning can be slowly constructed through attention, care, and the act of making itself.