I create community-engaged projects that focus on issues of deep significance. Recent projects have centered on the construction of race and racism, co-making as a restorative process, and human-scale responses to climate change. Celebratory gatherings and story-telling bring these larger ideas into focus, while research and archival work underpin my work. I seek to confront the largest and most intractable issues and create pathways for authentic engagement and change.

I invite people to risk engaging with others to understand themselves through visual, interactive, social, performative, and community-based work. I pursue actions, collaborations and installations in a range of contexts, including long-standing and temporary communities. 

I also cultivate a personal studio practice across media. This work has involved exploring personally restorative work in balance with my socially engaged projects.

The connective thread in all my work is my desire to build community and redress the significant social issues that afflict our society. I use art to lift up, to question, to connect, to give power, and to learn. I am committed to building and sustaining the connections between individual creative practice, collaborations with others, and social justice.

Bio

IlaSahai Prouty lives in the mountains, and also by the sea. She received her MFA from the California College of Art, a BA from Brown University. She is currently a professor in the Art Department at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. She has created projects and exhibited at venues throughout the United States.

CV

I’d love to hear from you!

ila prouty art at gmail dot com @prootproot