Kelly R Johnston

Lives and works in Chicago, IL, USA

Artist statement

My artwork is the human body; both subject and medium. What emerges from the tensions between its presences and absences guides my practice and directs the outcome. What do we hold and recognize as “interior” and “exterior” to the body? My process responds to this question by transmuting natural and found materials into form and installation that instigate and evoke a sensorial experience. The inevitable unfolding of the form gives voice and space to the body's observations by suspending what is ordinarily ephemeral for critical examination. Materials I work with materials that are tied to biological, historical, personal memories and lived experiences through an autoethnographic process of reflection. These deeply intimate artifacts serve as portals to the past, anchored in a sea of shifting identities and act as catalysts for introspection. Visceral materials, such as human hair, teeth, blood, clothes, and sutures, bandages, iodine, lidocaine, and industrial materials, like hardware cloth, plaster, concrete, twine, and rebar are constituted into abstract forms that invite enduring reflection within an emotional dimension. My work also evokes normatively feminized modes of labor and domesticity, often involving cookery, fiber work, and sewing that engages the intersections of the visceral and vulnerable nature of the body and the societal construction of the gendered forms of labor and aesthetics it is subjected to. Artwork/Experience The interplay between these elements...

Artwork