About the Artist

Elle Barbeito is an artist and designer based on the east-coast of the United States. A native of Miami, Florida, her intense process-based work takes on the unforgiving, and often brutal, aspects of the natural environment with industrious sensitivity. Her physical and emotional proximity to the Everglades propelled her into familiarizing herself with the necessary survival skills of hunting, skinning, and preserving skins for leatherwork. Her craft occupies a specific niche of reclaiming the land, as the primary source material comes from the ecologically invasive Burmese python (Python bivittatus). The dialogue around this process comes at a necessary time, where creatives should think to blend intention, sustainability, and function within their practice. Barbeito concocts these three elements into a bittersweet visual brew, immersing the viewer in a community defined by a swamp of survival.