eliana dianda
[Image description: Eliana peers out from the center of the image, adjusting her blue hair. Neon signs from Hillcrest glow in yellow, purple, and red hues behind her. Her hair and white sweatshirt reflect the colors.]
eliana helene dianda is a writer, filmmaker, and performance artist from Sacramento, California. Her first 18 years trapped in suburbia created a deep desire for the dramatic, which informs the performative nature of her written and visual work. Moreover, after growing up in Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and New Age spaces, dianda encountered inconsistencies of morality and ethics, ultimately emphasizing the conflict of her identity and home: what does it mean to be a mentally ill, queer woman in places you are not recognized nor welcomed? In her art, dianda searches for the truth about God and goodness in the grotesque and glorious, hoping to find herself in the space between.
Her first short film, GIRL (2016), examines how young girls with eating disorders perceive themselves. Its raw visuals and honest performance earned it a place in the Judges’ Choice Top 15 in the Girls Impact The World Film Festival in 2016.
Sponsored by the UC San Diego TRELS Summer Research Grant, IN HER OWN IMAGE (2020) is a three-part series of performances for camera in which dianda dissects the internalized trauma of Catholic school through the appropriation of Catholic language, ritual, and symbolism. It was exhibited in Almost-Public/Semi-Exposed 7* at the Artists’ Television Access’ Window Gallery in San Francisco in November 2020.
To persist in the creation of spaces for survivors like herself, dianda is working on two screenplays in the horror genre as a way to build worlds of subversion and altars for subculture.
Read her writing on HereIn: