Lauren Kalman

Statement

I am invested in using assertive and powerful performances of the female body in relationship to the built environment, wearable objects, and systemic power structures. I explore this territory through the lens of craft media.

My formative training is in the field of jewelry and contemporary crafts. Over the years my work has transitioned from jewelry as the format of my work to adornment as the subject of my work. I approach adornment through a variety of methods ranging from traditionally fabricated metal objects to textiles, beading, ceramics, installation, 3D printing, computer controlled objects, performance, photography, and video.

In recent history, craft has been recognized as a medium that endures outside of the white, male dominated, contemporary art world. Crafts have been socially constructed to be associated with the domestic, collective, and female. As my work deals largely with the female body, it calls upon historical associations with craft and the feminine. I choose to work within the craft traditions building on their association with the body, the senses, the feminine, the erotic, decadence, ritual, wealth, and power in ways that challenge the status quo.

My recent work has utilized a sterile aesthetic borrowed from Modernism combined with adornment and the female body. Fabricated objects that reflect sculptural ornamentation and adornment are combined with the body and design objects to produce photographs. These juxtapositions point to historical, political, and social contexts relating to sex, gender, power, pleasure, and beauty. I build objects and environments that interact with the body, and for the majority of my work I use my own body as the site for these interactions. These interactions are documented in photographs and video, and are presented as installations combining images, objects, sculptures, and video.

From Artist's website