“In my work as an artist, I have witnessed firsthand how a handful of dedicated visionaries are able to band together, source materials, create something new, and then offer it up into the world.”
EJ Hill is an artist born, raised, and based in South Central, Los Angeles. Hill’s practice focuses largely on challenging the social aspects and systems that construct a body. He is not only interested in how bodies and subjectivities are formed, understood, and valued within different social and cultural contexts, but also how they redefine the parameters that govern which of them are allowed to exist freely.
Hill received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2013 and a BFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2011. His work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Whitney Museum of American Art; MASS MoCA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Aspen Art Museum; PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine; and Institut d’art Contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, France.
He is a recipient of awards and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Durfee Foundation’s Stanton Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painters & Sculptors Grant, the Artadia Los Angeles Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts artist grant, and a grant from the Art Matters Foundation.
Much of what he knows he has learned from: Estelle Thompson, Karen Thompson, Ernest Hill Jr., Margaret Nomentana, Joan Giroux, Adam Brooks and Mat Wilson (Industry of the Ordinary), Andrea Fraser, Mario Ybarra Jr., Matt Austin, Young Chung, Adam Feldmeth, Jordan Casteel, TLC, Lauryn Hill, and Augie Grahn. Hill is forever indebted to these educators and thanks them endlessly.