elif collective is the artist that exists through Christian Pantoja the architect of its existence. My identity is an abstract essence that I perpetually wrestle into being. My process of becoming happens in the studio, the space where a dialogue unfolds between the formless core of myself and the world. Sculpture, painting, and collage are the languages I use, the very means by which I give shape to feeling and coax an inner echo into the light. My work is a captured moment in this ongoing formation, a beautiful, honest fragment of a self being assembled. The entire body of my art, in all its pieces, constitutes this emergent identity. It is a portrait not of who I am, but of my constant, searching journey of becoming. It is only through the living, breathing entity of elif that I can truly be witnessed.