Eddie Colla

"This piece was made for an exhibition in 2017 called 'Inviolable'. The entire exhibit was very much about a situation not unlike this current pandemic. The characters portrayed are tattered, seemingly exhausted, and in a sort of survival mode. My interest in this is to imagine who people are when the constructs of society are no longer functioning. Infrastructure, economies, technology are all very fragile constructed systems. Imagining that type of an event, I try to investigate primarily two things:

1) What aspects of who we are as humans––both individually and as a race––are inviolable?
2) The idea of atavistic tendencies.

The show was built around this piece of text:

In the end there will be no end
Nor God nor Redemption
Faith
Memories of Failure
Consequences
The Residue of Arrogance
The Solitude of Endurance
Nameless
Unguarded
Our Words
Miscarry
We Find Ourselves
Pronounce this in Silence
The Inviolable
Defined Unadorned
Forsaken
We have Risen

Eddie attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and graduated from the California College of Arts with a BFA in photography/interdisciplinary fine arts in 1991. He began his artistic career as a photographer, working first for the New York Times and later countless magazines, record labels and ad agencies. 15 years later he has morphed into one who counters the all-pervasive nature of commercialism in public spaces.

Since 2005, his wheatpastes and stencils can be found throughout public spaces in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Miami. Eddie's work first began to garner national recognition when his street art began incorporating images of Barack Obama throughout the 2008 Presidential election. His growing popularity landed him attention on internet blogs, features in six published books, and participation in the "Manifest Hope Art Gallery" shows at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and at the Presidential Inauguration in Washington D.C. His designs have been transformed many times over, from stickers, album and magazine covers.

Of his work Eddie states, “Some people view what I do as vandalism. I assume that their objection is that I alter the landscape without permission. Advertising perpetually alters our environment without the permission of it’s inhabitants. The only difference is that advertisers pay for the privilege to do so and I don’t. So if you’re going to call me anything, it is more accurate to call me a thief.” His work has been featured alongside Hush, Blek Le Rat, Shepard Fairey, Banksy, Keith Haring, and Kaws in the Indoor Mural show at 941 Geary in San Francisco, the Arts Fund Expo at Art Basel Miami and Digard's "Urban Contemporary Art" Auction in Paris. In August of 2011, Eddie completed an 80 ft mural in Little Saigon San Francisco chronicling the Vietnamese Diaspora. In 2012 Eddie participated in Pow Wow Hawaii and created an all encompassing post-apocalyptic installation with D Young V and Hugh Leeman at Hold -Up Gallery in Los Angeles.

Eddie took on the role of curator at lOAKal gallery in Oakland CA in December of 2012. In 2013 Eddie worked closely on collaborations with D Young V creating several large scale public mural projects and a 2 man installation "Memento Mori" in San Rafael CA. His curating extended to Ian Ross Gallery in San Francisco where he curated "Made in China" a group exhibition where contemporary artists had their work hung side by side with counterfeits produced in an oil painting factory in China. Through 2014-15 Eddie began traveling to Europe and Asia creating street pieces for Paris and Thailand. He finished off the year with 2 collaborative murals with D Young V in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico for Dreamers Art Festival. His work has also been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post and the Chicago Tribune.