Elizabeth Sisco is an artist and a teacher of new media art. She received a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego. Since 1988, she has collaborated in a series of provocactive public artworks that address the role of the artist
in shaping community dialog and debate on important social issues. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Matters, Inc., and The California Arts Council. Her work has been commissioned by The Banff Centre for the Arts, the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, The Los Angeles Museum of Contemp-orary Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

In her role as a teacher, she has designed and implemented curriculum in interactive multimedia and digital imaging.

Artist Statement

My public art works expand the role of art and the artist in society. The multimedia installations I have made for gallery settings explore the relationship between image and text in works that engage the viewer's participation in the construction of cultural meaning.

The roots of my art practice lie in documentary photography. The inadequacies of traditional social-documentary approaches to give voice to the subject, locate the maker in the construction of meaning, and reach a broad popular audience have led
a few well-chosen collaborators and me into the street with
art messages. The public art provocations I have created with Deborah Small, Louis Hock, and David Avalos are devised
to speak publicly about social and political topics. The work challenges contemporary attempts to restrict and control speech, underscores the dearth of public space in a landscape controlled by private interests, and insists that the process and practice of art is an integral part of community life. My motivation is to fight historical amnesia with action by continually demonstrating that art is a powerful, functional practice.

At the same time I still appreciate the gallery as an arena for discourse. Its enclosed halls allow for the contemplative elaboration of visual ideas that are necessarily sacrificed in the street. My installation works layer documentary photography, texts and objects to address the construction of individual and social identity.