SAIC SHOWS 2026 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Graduates

SAIC SHOWS 2026 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Elise Gagliardi

Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts Degree

Low-Residency MFA Exhibition

annie.elise@gmail.com

elisegagliardi.com

Elise Gagliardi is a performance artist and photographer. She draws inspiration from rituals of cleansing, memorializing, and mythologizing. She creates spaces to enact contemplative rituals reclaiming her individual power and autonomy.

As a third-generation florist, Gagliardi also explores themes of legacy and motherhood, personified through flowers, fruits, fabric, oil, water, and her body. Her films and photographs are documentation of her ritual-making and studio practice.

Her images are carefully curated altars rich with symbolic objects and acts. She is interested in the moving still, emphasizing the slow and simultaneously fast passage of time we experience throughout our lives. She preserves that moment through the lens of her camera.

Gagliardi’s performance and installation work is meant to be participatory and reflective. She invites her audience to remember that, like flowers, life is fragile; therefore, it is important to live with care and intention. Yet, there is also a hopeful acknowledgment of nature’s regenerative power, which cycles through death and rebirth. The fleeting beauty of the natural world mirrors our own impermanence while also symbolizing resilience, beauty, and opulence.

Gagliardi is from Castle Rock, Colorado, but is currently based in Kansas City, Missouri. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her work has been published in various art publications, such as Camera Works. She has exhibited her work nationally, including in group and solo shows. A few places her work has been displayed include the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Rockhurst University, Greenlease Gallery, the Center for Fine Art Photography in Colorado, and the Denver International Airport.

Elise Gagliardi - The Mythology of Alÿs Blanc

The Mythology of Alÿs Blanc, 2025, Live performance: My mother was afraid. “I don't know how to bring a daughter into this world.” She wrapped me and swaddled me. Singing lullaby’s to herself and I she placed me under the lilac brush and whispered a prayer. “The flowers will guide you, the flowers will guide you, the flowers will guide you, the flowers will guide you.” And so they did. I followed their roots deep into the darkness and I listened and waited and listened.

The Mythology of Alÿs Blanc is a performance about becoming. It is about the ravenous nature of a woman and mother. She is powerful, she is invincible. She can walk across water with three children on her back. You must never doubt her, and yet the world rejects her. They reject her children, her vagina, her bosom, and her strength. Yet, she endures and she will feast.

Elise Gagliardi - Strings Attached

Strings Attached, 2020, Live Performance Still, artist and daughter.

This performance is about the physical and emotional connections between children and parents. In the dawn of parenting with technology, heightened self awareness, and self denial. We are in an era of parental isolation. The performance itself was a moment where her three children held tight to the strings sewn to her artificial flesh. As they ran away from her the strings pulled and tore her 'skin'. This spoke to her anxieties about parenting and the precarious attachments we form with our children as we navigate parenting in these rapidly evolving times.

Elise Gagliardi - Mother and Child

Mother and Child, 2024, Alter, photography size varies

Mother and child is a triptych that was a site specific installation in response to a 14th century altarpiece the Madonna of Humility. It included symbolic flowers such as the white lily as Mary, Mother of Christ, the varigated red and yellow carnation representing infant Christ, and the pomegranates and squash to symbolize fertility.

Elise Gagliardi - Line = Time

Line = Time, 2024, Video Performance Still

Line=Time is a video performance that is a part of a larger body of work called the Purification Series. In this piece Gagliardi uses a white oil crayon to draw 39 lines around and down her body. 39 lines for 39 years of life. She is thinking about rings on a tree, layered sentiments, and mountain topographies that have been worn by time and external elements. It is a way of recounting life choices and experiences. Starting at the crown of the head she traces her contours ritually and literally. This act of tracing is an act of grounding. As a subject of sexual and emotional abuse, Gagliardi is finding ways to be present in her body. The Purification Series is about the process of ritual in seeking healing from trauma for the mind and spirit. Gagliardi’s practice is often centered around reflection, time, and an invitation for introspection.

Elise Gagliardi - Pine Creek Baptism

Pine Creek Baptism, 2007, Performance Still, Photography

Pine Creek Baptism is a performance where Gagliardi laid in Pine Creek next to her grandparents cabin after her grandmother died. She put on her grandmother's clothes and laid in the river as a symbol of grief and inheritance. Our family members are given continued life through our memories and love.