VALS: ADAMS-TILLIM LECTURE: Elle Pérez

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Elle Pérez (they/them) is a Bronx, New York-born Puerto Rican artist and photographer living and working in Brooklyn, New York. They received their Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art and their Master of Fine Art from Yale School of Art in 2015. Pérez works closely with members of the LGBTQIA+ community and much of their work visualizes the layers and varied aspects of gender identity and intimacy. Pérez has called the photograph “a perfect container because it is not actually, ever, definitive." Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with recent solo shows in Mass MoCA in 2023, the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2022, and work included in the 59th International Venice Biennale. 

They are an Assistant Professor of Photography at the Yale School of Art, and have previously held appointments at the Visual Studies Department at Harvard University, Williams College, and The Cooper Union. Pérez was also the Dean of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture from 2016 to 2021. They have completed residencies at MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, and many more. Their work is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

Sources:

• Art 21 
• Artist's website 
• Forbes profile

Images: left, photograph by Elle Pérez, right Wilding and Charles, 2019 from 47 Canal