"Midden"

"Midden" by Printmaker and Painter Kaleena Stasiak. Exhibit was shown May 7th through July 3rd 2021.

In Midden, Stasiak uses sculpture and found objects in conjunction with printmaking to discuss the relationship between historical and contemporary material culture. Digging through a lexicon of symbols and imagery evoking American colonial times, folk art, and quilts, Stasiak interrogates early history and domestic labor. These graphic cyphers denote the power and breadth of traditional women’s work, functional handicraft, and the impulse to create. Decoration and ornamentation become expressions of desire, signifiers of identity, and autobiographical documentation of lives omitted from text-based historical narratives and artistic discourse. The implied functionality of the sculptural works points to human ritual and survival while also opening up to expanded modern interpretations. Painted gourds, whirligigs, and weathervanes once served vital human needs, but now litter antique malls and craft shows, their former utility relinquished for kitsch and nostalgic value. In Midden, Stasiak’s craft-based investigation explores the performative reproduction of formerly functional objects as a form of historical interpretation and re-envisioning of the future.

Kaleena Stasiak is an interdisciplinary artist who uses an assortment of haptic media such as printmaking, ceramics, textiles, and wood furniture to explore methods of the consumption of history. Her material investigations question the way individual, regional, and national identities are constructed in order to understand the formulation of collective myths, their relevance to the present, and ways to productively disrupt them. Recent shows include Ancient Art Objects curated by Katie Geha at Whitespace in Atlanta, GA, Give Them the Slip curated by Wendy Vogel and presented by Regina Rex at bitforms Gallery in New York, NY, and Identity Measures curated by Jordan Amirkhani at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, LA. Stasiak received her BFA in Printmaking from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Ontario in 2008 and her MFA in Printmaking & Book Arts from the University of Georgia in 2018. Currently she is Lecturer in Printmaking & Foundations at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia.