BIOGRAPHY 

 Yeltsin Penado is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles. He holds a BFA in Painting with a minor in Community Arts from Otis College of Art and Design, and has over a decade of experience teaching STEAM-focused art and design to youth across Southern California. As the School Programs Manager at Rediscover Center, he leads creative education programs that emphasize sustainability, systems thinking, and hands-on making. His curriculum development centers on gifted learners, guiding students to design games and sculptural works using cardboard and recycled materials. A first-generation Salvadoran American, his work is grounded in themes of memory, war, and cultural identity—often bridging digital media with traditional craft. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a first-generation Salvadoran American, my work navigates the legacy of war as both a global force and an intimate inheritance. My parents immigrated to the United States due to conflict in El Salvador—a history that threads through my practice as I examine how militarism, displacement, and nationalism shape personal identity. I grew up in post-9/11 America, surrounded by a culture of heightened patriotism and wartime imagery, which profoundly influenced how I processed the world as a young artist. I revisit these tensions through digital landscapes, machinima, sculpture, and community-based education.

My current body of work uses the Arma 3 game engine to construct historically accurate and fictional terrains that explore collective memory and speculative resistance. One ongoing project, The Civil War, is a machinima series set in the fictional country of Chernarus, where a rebel army fights occupying U.S. and Russian forces. The narrative mirrors Cold War-era proxy conflicts, drawing parallels to the geopolitical struggles that destabilized Central America. In another project, I design WWII battlefields used by military simulation communities for reenactments, transforming interactive gameplay into a form of living digital historiography. These terrains, crafted with obsessive historical precision, are both tribute and critique—memorials embedded in code.

I also create ambient war videos that blur the line between violence and stillness, where patrols unfold in real time with no combat, only the distant sounds of gunfire and atmospheric tension. These works act as slow meditations on conflict—equal parts ASMR, documentary, and anti-war film. My physical practice includes cardboard sculpture and sustainable materials, which I integrate into educational settings. Through this dual approach—digital and tactile—I explore the architectures of violence, memory, and survival.

At its core, my work asks: What does it mean to inherit war without having fought it? I create in the space between the virtual and the real, between cultural rupture and reinvention, where world-building becomes both resistance and repair.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Yeltsin has worked in STEAM education for for +5 years teaching and leading workshops. He attends STEAM education workshops, professional development sessions, symposiums, and lectures.