Bio | eliseoartsilva

Biography

Eliseo Art Silva is a multi-awarded artist, prolific painter, pioneering Filipino muralist, cultural strategist, community organizer, cultural branding designer, and author whose work redefines studio art and public art as a force for historical reclamation, civic imagination, and diasporic pride. Born in Manila in 1972 and based between Los Angeles and the Philippines, Silva’s multimedia practice fuses mythic symbolism, critical historiography, and participatory design to restore Filipino narratives to the center of global discourse, and reclaim authorship of marginalized communities at the center of their own narratives.

Internationally recognized for over 100 public art projects, Silva is best known for Gintong Kasaysayan, Gintong Pamana—the seminal mural in Historic Filipinotown that honors Filipino Americans as catalysts of the 1965 Delano Grape Strike. Hailed by the Smithsonian Institution as “bold and daring” and listed by LA Weekly among “20 Iconic Murals of Los Angeles,” the work is not only the earliest and largest Larry Itliong-centered mural, but also it's October 21,1995 mural dedication marked the first public celebration of Larry Itliong Day in the U.S. His design of Talang Gabay: Our Guiding Star, the Eastern Gateway to Historic Filipinotown, further cements his role as a civic visionary.

Silva earned his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design as a Getty Museum Arts Fellow under Judy Baca, and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), studying with Grace Hartigan and Dominique Nahas. His accolades include the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, Skowhegan Residency, Independence Foundation Fellowship, and international honors such as the Nehru Gold Medal (India) and Letran College’s Grandes Figuras Award (Philippines).

His work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, LACMA, Skirball Cultural Center, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Honolulu Academy of Art, and CUE Art Foundation in New York. His legacy projects span coast to coast—from the Larry Itliong, Bob Santos, and Carlos Bulosan memorial murals in Delano and Seattle, to the Philippine Nationality Room at the University of Pittsburgh, the anti-domestic violence public art in Alaska, the Manifest Diversity 50th Anniversary mural of CSUDH in Carson, the Price of Freedom US Veterans memorial mural near Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc, CA and the fresco and mosaic Filipino Saints Heritage Shrine at St. Columban Catholic Church in Los Angeles.

As a cultural strategist, Silva advises cities, museums, businesses, and educational institutions on inclusive placemaking, ethnic studies integration, and narrative equity. He is the founding president of FANHS-PA and co-founder of the Larry Itliong Day Philippines Campaign (LIDPC). In the digital sphere, Silva curates and manages culturally resonant platforms such as the Philippine Camelot and LIDPC Facebook pages, amplifying Filipino history and identity. He is the author of Filipinos of Greater Philadelphia (Arcadia Publishing, 2012) a pioneering book on East Coast Filipino history, with a forthcoming companion west coast volume, Filipinos of Riverside and the Inland Empire, slated for release in 2026.

Silva’s art is a living archive—layering ancestral memory, surrealist technique, and decolonial resistance into urban space. His practice invites viewers to reimagine marginalized aesthetics not as peripheral artifacts, but as vital forces shaping contemporary art and cultural consciousness.

Artist Statement

My enduring passion for art lies in painting and participatory, community-driven approaches to urban design and public art. I believe art is an unparalleled medium for documenting lived experience—an expressive channel through which communities connect, flourish, and reimagine their place within the urban landscape. It invites that crucial first step toward empathetic engagement.

At the heart of my artistic practice is a desire to reconcile the history of my lineage with the history of painting. I seek to narrow the divide between the human and the divine, the visible and the erased—using techniques such as palimpsest, magic realism, surrealism, and automatism to evoke cultural vibrancy. Marginalized images and voices, often rendered invisible, are reanimated to shift the viewer’s role from passive observer to active participant—transforming the amphitheater into a stage, and the spectacle into a shared experience. This conceptual framework draws from Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, as expanded by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975), to interrogate how visibility and control shape cultural perception.

My work foregrounds the obscured and forgotten, exposing the architectures of power—those designed to regulate subjugation, objectification, erasure, and influence. I explore the thresholds between barbarism and civilization, savagery and citizenship, using artifacts from diverse cultures to construct layered hybrids that suggest, obscure, and reimagine meaning. Beginning with personal dreams, memories, and photographs, I embark on a journey that is both intimate and collective—probing my identity as a migrant artist and interrogating the notion of “Filipino Identity” within the Western canon. This inquiry juxtaposes the polarities of art and culture from my homeland, both in situ and in diaspora.

In my studio practice, I decode cryptic modes of personal and communal expression, examining how suppressed cultures reclaim identity amid systemic oppression. I also explore how heritage is manifested—from ancient landmarks and natural wonders to contemporary markets and toys. By portraying memory and familial ties through a process that crystallizes knowledge intimately—rather than broadcasting it publicly—I’ve found a convergence between studio and public art, a unified voice that bridges private reflection and collective resonance.

Though I’ve been on a “temporary detour” in the United States for over thirty years, I remain a Filipino in the global diaspora—not a Filipino American. I retain my Filipino passport and citizenship, affirming my allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines.

Through my work, I aim to surface “The Filipino Story,” reversing colonial narratives by positioning the Philippines and Filipino Americans as central protagonists. In doing so, Filipino aesthetics, chronicles, and mythologies undergo a vital transformation—toward greater visibility, relevance, and cultural agency. This is not merely an act of remembrance, but a reclamation of authorship.