Natalya Kornblum-Laudi

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

My practice investigates the invisible systems and narratives that shepherd our lives, cultural scripts, psychological frameworks, and unseen infrastructures that shape how we perceive the world and ourselves. I explore these systems through the lens of the rural/urban divide, drawn to the ways urban audiences imagine rural America and to the fantasies of farming and “country living” sold to city dwellers. Growing up in the Hudson Valley, I witnessed how tourism and second-home ownership generate both opportunity and tension, revealing how desire from the outside can reshape local communities. I examine how rural life has been historically and culturally repackaged, from 19th-century landscape paintings that promoted westward expansion to contemporary real-estate imagery that sells a curated pastoral ideal. Functional tools of labor, once embedded in daily life, become objects that signify class and nostalgia on the wall. Through recreating and queering these objects in new materials, I surface the narratives and biases embedded in American nostalgia. My work investigates the cognitive dissonance, code-switching, and gendered expectations required of individuals navigating rural spaces. Using traditional craft, I explore how ideas of skill, labor, and identity are inscribed onto materials, and onto people, shifting with context. Ultimately, my work traces how rural culture is aestheticized, mythologized, and consumed, and how these processes shape our understanding of...

Artwork