Sophia AInslie
Elisa H. Hamilton is a socially engaged multimedia artist who creates artworks and community-centered projects that emphasize shared spaces and the hopeful examination of our everyday places, objects, and experiences. She holds a BFA in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MA in Civic Media from Emerson College.
Hamilton is a 2023 Brother Thomas Fellow, and she has been recognized by WBUR as one of 25 Artists of Color Transforming The Cultural Landscape. She has been the recipient of numerous commissions and grants to create artworks, community projects, and participatory programs. These works include “Jukebox,” a permanent public art installation and archive of community narratives, commissioned by the City of Cambridge; “Sound Lab,” an interactive installation commissioned by The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and showcasing the sounds and voices of Boston-area community organizations, and "Glimpses of Glapion," an augmented reality public art project created as part of the Emerson Contemporary's "Hidden Histories" initiative and funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s Un-monument project, supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Her work is in the collections of Fidelity Investments, Bank of America, and CitizenM Hotels.
Hamilton has created projects for institutions including ICA Boston, The Currier Museum of Art, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Tyler School of Art, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Boston Center for the Arts, The MGH Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds, For Freedoms, and Boston Public Art Triennial (formerly Now+There).
Photo: Kate Preftakes
I have always been a writer of notes, and have always preferred the living mark on a page to the cursor on a screen. I’ve always loved the written note on paper; tactile evidence of a thought, a task, a day, a life. An intimate marker of time that is both tangible and ephemeral…The pages you see here are notes of writers and writings that have stayed with me, and they are juxtaposed with some of my own personal revelations. This work unfolded out of my own experience of this particular moment —a time of growth, transition, loss, and reforming. Quietly hopeful, these small notes speak to a larger awareness of the fleetingness of each moment. Together, they chart the possibilities of what is to come; they linger here for a while, to remind us of what has been and what still can be. Through this work, I pause, reflect, and push gently forward.
—Elisa H. Hamilton
featured worK
past exhibitions
Woven | September 2 - 27, 2025
Spill Without Splatter | October 8 – November 6, 2021
2021 Holiday "Smalls" | November 12–December 18
Virtual Summer Camp: New Work by NAGA Artists | July 2020 *Online Exhibition*
2020 Holiday "Smalls" | November 6 – December 19, 2020
Last Touch | May 31 - July 13
40th Anniversary: Artists A - K | May 5 - 27, 2017
Pata Pata | September 8–October 3, 2015