Serena JV Elston is a disabled artist and curator currently living and working between Chicago and Southern Wisconsin. Serena’s work critiques aspects of institutional preservation as an extension of Western civilization - its colonial illusion of power and ultimate frailty. If the level of maintenance required to sustain a system is relative to its fragility, her work illuminates the constant necessary actions to sustain and uphold its construction. Identifying these moments of porosity, which then require maintenance, allows these systems to be seen as choices rather than inevitabilities. Her work has been exhibited by Co-Prosperity and Heaven Gallery in Chicago, Ever Gold [Projects] in San Francisco, CA, VideoDrome Paris, S.O.F.A. Italy, and Cal State Fine Arts Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Reeder, Gertie Chicago, and The Latch. Serena is a recent MFA graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.