Lela Pierce is a multiracial (Black: Negro, Creole, Creek/Muskogee Native and White: Croatian, Lemko, Rusyn) American visual artist and dancer. She has been a student of the Himalayan Yoga Tradition since childhood, spending a significant amount of time in India over the past decade. Her work is inspired by her ancestors, the spirit world, and the intelligence found in nature.Lela Pierce is interested in continuing her investigation of invasive plant species in Sweden, looking at the attitudes, language, stories and relationships people have to their presence in more rural areas. She is interested in witnessing the ways that indigenous communities, immigrants, refugees, and other minority groups exist and do or do not integrate themselves into the historic and current social-political climate of Sweden. She will be thinking about how this information may or may not relate back to the presence of Swedish settlers in Minnesota as agents of colonization. Additionally, she will draw upon her personal experiences growing up in a rural Minnesotan town where my family members were amongst a few people of color in a sea of Scandinavian and Western European descendants. Lela hopes to create an immersive installation during the residency, using plant matter from invasive species to express insights around migration, colonization, balance, control, violence, and acceptance/rejection. Additionally, she plans to cultivate and maintain a personal practice of dancing and painting during her time at Kultivera, striving to refine a non-eurocentric and properly appropriated personal aesthetic with clearly expressed ideology. Lela anticipates the time at Kultivera will provide ample space to imagine and dream of societal healing and transformation, while making new connections.
 
Website: http://www.mnartists.org/lela-pierce