In 2015, Elliott Earls had his Installation Elegy For The Collapse of the Empire shown at the Milan Triennale museum. The installation was a major milestone for Earls and marked his growth as an artist in the community. For the exhibition, he created a large display of multiple different types of art, all culminating into one entire art display and walk-around.

Along with his bust made of unfiltered beeswax, dead bees, horsehair and linen string, specifically named Colony Collapse Disorder, porcelain figures on a drawer-like object were a part of Earls’s installment. Elegy For The Collapse of the Empire contained symbols and pictures of America including the American flag, red, white and blue colors and stars. The installation also included five iPads on the ground of the exhibit with different pictures being displayed. In the back of the installation, a hemi-sphere of a head with ears is on the ground, opposite a mainly yellow painting laying on an easel. Fides is the name that was given to the porcelain figures as well as the 48 x 96″ painting of similar stature on black ground glass by Elliott Earls. The figures depict an alien cyclops-like humanoid of spartan-esque musculature bearing an armor chest plate.

It seems that Earls wanted to draw attention to the leader of America, portrayed by the somewhat gruesome and attention-grabbing bust in the middle of the exhibit. By naming it “Colony Collapse Disorder,” it makes me wonder if Earls meant to say that, much like our bees, our government is in collapse. Seemingly, spontaneously and quickly crumbling, but also simultaneously living up to our Grecian roots. Falling from grace for our Athenian, democratic ideal, and getting closer to, or perhaps similarly in living, a Spartan-like militaristic everyday life (Earls).