eliza combs (they/she) is a multidisciplinary artist, expressive arts therapist, and somatics facilitator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. they work in installation, painting, sculpture, and video art, exploring the body as memory, resistance, pattern, rupture, and transmutation. drawing from queer, genderqueer, femme/feminist, and working-class identities, as well as Irish, Cornish, and German ancestral lineages, combs explores what it means to survive, create, and thrive within systems of oppression, trauma and violence.
their practice is inspired by body-psycho-spiritual and earth-cosmos ways of knowing. ritual, movement, and collective reimagining form into artworks that seek to express the beauty and terror of being alive in a body. since graduating from art school in 2002, combs has been involved in street theater, protest and public art and creative collaborations with marginalized and LGBTQ2S+ youth—experiences that continue to shape their principles, ethics and visual language. they have practiced psychotherapy and expressive arts professionally for the past 12 years specializing in historical and intergenerational trauma recovery, expressive arts and body-centered practices.
In Service of ARTists
Vital Spaces supports local, emerging & BIPOC artists and is inclusive of artists of all ages, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, and countries of origin. By providing affordable space, we provide venues for artists who might not otherwise know one another to come together in community and collaboration. We work to share this collaborative energy with the broader Santa Fe public through our programming.