Anastasia Pelias was born in New Orleans to a Greek immigrant mother and a first generation Greek-American father. She received her BFA from the Newcomb College of Tulane University in 1981, and her MFA from the University of New Orleans in 1996. Pelias has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums nationwide, and has been featured in publications including Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, Artnet news, ArtDaily, Forbes, Pelican Bomb and New Orleans Art Review. Her work appears in the permanent collections at the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; the Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, and in private and public collections worldwide.

Pelias’ work has been featured in notable exhibitions including The Whole Drum Will Sound: Women in Southern Abstraction at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in 2018, and Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women in Louisiana at Newcomb Art Museum in 2019 and at the Ford Foundation Gallery in 2020. In 2018, Pelias was commissioned by the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX to to make a site-specific sculpture and painting installation. In 2020, Pelias was commissioned by the Domain Companies to create a 54 foot mural at the Odeon Building in New Orleans. In 2020 she was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Residency. Pelias was a selected artist in the Prospect.5 Triennial, 2021-22, where she exhibited a site-specific multi sensory installation involving sculpture, a painted landscape, sound and scent.