Kelli Connell and Natalie Krick reimagine Edward Steichen's oeuvre and his subsequent influence on the photographic medium through his work as a war photographer, chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair, delphinium breeder and director of the department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art 1947-1962.
Connell and Krick crop, composite, re-edit, colorize, and re-sequence images from Steichen’s archives. Through a process of text erasures and word play, Connell and Krick work with the original language found in the Family of Man exhibition catalogue. These new text and image interpretations serve to interrogate their originals, reflecting upon what narratives are told, by whom, and for whom. Through reimagining Steichen’s work, Connell and Krick’s photographs raise questions about the history of photography, a history that is all-to-often incomplete, imperfect and privileged in its authorship.
Rituals—religious and cultural, institutional and domestic—provide the thematic infrastructure for OFF-SPRING: New Generations. These sculptures, paintings, photographs, and videos employ iconographic imagery to explore the development of both personal and group identity, childhood, family, history, and gender politics. At the wedding altar, in the family home, or in the classroom, within the fantasy of childhood play or the familiarity of grown-up habit, these new, old narratives generate a spectrum of meditations on the contemporary construction of self and society. In OFF-SPRING, transformations of iconic imagery from spheres both sacred and profane generate a new power, the power of potential and change.
Curators: Alice Gray Stites and Juli Lowe
Artists: Carrie Mae Weems, Deanna Lawson, Ren Hang, Kelli Connell, Natalie Krick, Michael Koerner, Yolando del Amo, Crista Parravani, and Trine Sondergaard, among many other contemporary artists.
Refracting Histories features eight artists looking critically at the traditional canon within the history of photography. Each artist challenges, probes, or deconstructs well-known art historical legacies, revealing the contributions of overlooked makers as well as pervasive discriminations that maintain the status quo. While some artists appropriate well-known works into new forms, others set up a constructed environment to visualize lost histories. Collectively, the exhibition honors the malleable nature of photography as a fitting medium to redirect, reinterpret, and expand upon prescribed doctrines.
Curators: Karen Irvine and Kristin Taylor
Artists: Aaron Turner, Colleen Keihm, Kelli Connell, Natalie Krick, Nona Faustine Simmons, Sonja Thomsen, Tarrah Krajnak, Tom Jones
Rewriting Art History: Works from Kelli Connell, Natalie Krick and Hanita Schwartz
Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle
October 27 - December 08, 2022
Taking a critical look at how art fosters both truth and propaganda, idolization and weaponization, revolution and oppression, Rewriting Art History features works from Kelli Connell’s and Natalie Krick’s o_Man! and from Hanita Schwartz’s Fragments of a Gaze from the series This Magnificent Volume. Both projects delve into influential books and careers and through their manipulation, erasure, deconstruction, and reconstruction of them they introduce a different narrative than originally written. These works examine history and patriarchy through bold visual conversations to redistribute power and privilege.
Curator: Terry Novak
Questions about what constitutes an archive interest me but proved less relevant during the selection process for this exhibition. What I found important and exciting is the consistently compelling visual expressions found in this group of archive-based works and the range of significant subjects addressed, including Blackness, queerness, institutional racism, environmental histories, diasporic erasure, an invented history of illness, and the physical accumulation of photographic materials.
Mary Statzer, Juror's Statement
Artists: Carmelo Amenta, Tristan Cai, Alison Carey, Kelli Connell and Natalie Krick, Diane Durant, Jennifer Everett, Rachel Fein-Smolinski, Dana Fritz, Meg Griffiths, Sarah Hadley, Muriel Hasbun, Vikesh Kapoor, Forest Kelley, Marika Kent, Kollin Kirven, Kevin Miyazaki, Toni Pepe, Elizabeth Stone, Aaron Turner & Melanie Walker
A new year stretches in front of us, but last year’s mark was significant. For so many of us, the pattern of our lives changed dramatically. Our ideas shifted, our schedules changed, our nature altered. Just like the ring of a tree grain can show changes from year to year, our lives have shifted in response to 2020. As a reliable historical reflection, artists embody these shifts in concept and practice, forming patterns in paint, thread, line- shaping large works from small pieces- creating space and filling it.
Curators: Kaylan Buteyn, Pam Marlene Taylor
Artists: Kaylan Buteyn + Elan Cadiz + Casey Neumann + Iviva Olenick + Yifan Wu + Fu Fang / Pam Marlene Taylor + Kelli Connell + Natalie Krick + Ilana Zweschi + Colleen RJC Bratton + Connie Fu