"My studio is my body holding a camera."
“Any form of role play has been very important to my work. It does intersect with fantasy a lot as fantasy and art are both forms of escapism,” they said. “The intertwining of literature and visual art is important to me, like the titles of my work the words I put with my work are especially now becoming more important.”
MX Eli says they first got involved in photography at the age of 15, when they started taking classes offered by their school’s visual arts program. They then studied photography at RMIT, where they started making their ongoing project titled ‘Red My Lips’ in 2014.
The project, which was a documentary portraiture series of around 60 pieces, was inspired by the not-for-profit organisation of the same name which uses red lipstick as a symbol to discuss and raise awareness for sexual assault and sexual violence. MX Eli collaborated with many subjects for the project which involved them telling a story displayed in a handwritten note that accompanied a portrait of them wearing red lipstick. It is a project MX Eli says they will never truly be finished with.
“It was the first time that I did something that I've wanted to do for a really long time and that was melding my advocacy through my work,” they said. “In the end it was everyone’s faces all next to each other and it was very powerful to see these people staring back at you as an audience and kind of confronting the audience with these very real messages.”
MX Eli says that they enjoy working with other people to create content, specifically people they know and have a shared experience with. They say this pre-existing connection makes the process of doing a shoot even more meaningful.
“I realised that my work is not true to itself and as an accurate if I'm using agency models it needs to be people that I know and that I understand. I try and work with people who have a shared life experience with me or that we've talked about.”
MX Eli also said that whilst they love photography as a medium, over time they have discovered that their work is not something that can be restricted to one medium, and therefore they utilise many different art forms within their photography such as dance, music, architecture, and roleplay.
“I want to continue to breach difference kind of mediums not because I just want to do more but because I realised that I can't just articulate it in one medium. My niche doesn't fall to one medium it falls to one narrative,” they said.
The ability to snapshot a moment in time is one element of photography that inspires MX Eli, describing it as “very personal and magical”. Three themes MX Eli identified as being present in their work are form, narrative, and hybridisation. Whilst they say no two shoots are the same, there is a common ending.
“I have a mantra that the shoot’s not done till I'm lying on the floor,” they said.
Instagram: @mx_eli_