Jime: Could you talk a little bit more about your work and how you came to develop as an artist?

Elia: "I got involved with theater in Costa Rica. I went to the University in Costa Rica and studied there theater and also dance and then I came to the United States and got involved in puppetry. The reason I got involved in puppetry was because I couldn't speak English very well and so I started to get involved with arts that were visual. At the same time that I got involved with puppetry, I started to do some film work and that brought me to work in a few films. I was working with the homeless and I was very impressed with the performance that I saw that they did, and that was I guess my first introduction of what performance art can do when it's done working in communities. I feel that different art forms serve different purposes according to what one wants to say as an artist. Sometimes I visualize it in a film way, sometimes I visualize it in a performative action way, sometimes I hear a poem, and sometimes I hear a story."

Jime: Could we talk a little bit about the Fruitvale project.

Elia: "For me, in the first phase of the project, the important part of it was to get to know the artists from an artistic point of view and challenge the artist in whatever the artistic medium was that they wanted to investigate for themselves. And so utilizing the theme of immigration with the whole idea that me being an immigrant, my experience about my body is my home and so therefore I carry my home wherever I go, that for me was an empowering discovery but also an empowering concept that I wanted to embody."

"And from the place that if the artist is stronger in their artwork and also in their belief systems, that strength is going to be transmitted to whichever community they go to work with. And so I feel like the first phase was more focused on the artist as an individual and how the whole issue of immigration was embodied in their own lives, and whether we wanted to be inside our bodies or not be inside of our bodies and discover the reasons for our choices. By bringing this concept to the second phase of the Fruitvale Project."

Jime: What are the goals for the second phase of the Fruitvale Project?

Elia: "I think that the main thing for me is to successfully get to a point where the artists feel comfortable enough to interact with the community of Fruitvale. And that takes time, time to basically do a lot of hanging out with the people who live in the community, to walk the community, to go to the restaurants in the community, to go to the bars in the community, the stores and establish certain kinds relationships with people that they encounter. So for me, if that is accomplished, than the work is going to come out of that and that's when we get the real material that we want to be working with.

"The artists in the project are all either directly immigrants or sons or granddaughters of immigrants. And so that knowledge is already in each artist, even if they're from a different community, even if you go speak to a Bosnian immigrant there is a relationship that exists there. That even if you can't speak the same language that well and you are communicating in English, because that's the common language we are sharing right now, there is certain aspects that we are sharing. Those are aspects of displacement, memories that we left behind, our relationship to the land that we are from that we are not from there anymore, so those type of issue I think are the issues we identified with."

Jime: What is the connection between La Pena and the Fruitvale?

Elia: "Even though the Fruitvale is a very old community, it seems like right now there is some sense of growth, some sense of deciding really big things, like how the community is going to look, from what color they are going to paint the trash cans, to what their going to be planting in the garden, things like that and I feel like the connection between artists and history and how they can help in the growth of the community I feel is a perfect connection with a place like La Peņa whose been in existence for over 25 years and that was actually started by immigrants as well.

"I feel very much at home La Peņa, and it's like the thing that I was talking about, even though I haven't had a very long relationship with La Peņa, I feel like I have. Because all those issues that I inhabit are being dealt with here everyday, with the process of the creation of the space, the political history, and the cultural history, I feel very connected to that. So it's very familiar, I feel very comfortable working at La Peņa."