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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251107T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251107T210000
DTSTAMP:20251021T191459Z
CREATED:20251021T191410Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251021T191459Z
UID:10867-1762538400-1762549200@relayridge.org
SUMMARY:Queer as Water - Kenzie Wells
DESCRIPTION:Join us First Friday November 7th for our 🚨 last opening of the year! We are thrilled to host the opening reception of the exhibition Queer as Water by Kenzie Wells. \nDuring this event\, we will be hosting our Open Artist Studios with all our Relay Ridge Resident Artists\n✨PLUS✨\nwe will be hosting a pop-up outdoor exhibition of the 2025 Steamroller BIG Prints made during Knox Small Press Fest @knoxsmallpressfest with a few woodblocks on display in the printshop. \nQUEER AS WATER \n \nMy mixed-media practice explores sites of environmental and queer resilience that overturn\nheteronormative social structures. Industrial items such as gates and tires are sculpted into\nconglomerations coated in residues of resin. Found trinkets are fossilized into surfaces\, some forming\nsarcastic\, queer-coded messages. These assemblages subvert capitalistic norms that perpetuate\necological demise\, commenting on how political forces inhibiting LGBTQIA+ rights coincide with\nsocietal shifts toward ecocide. \nIn Long Live Queer Night Life\, Amin Ghaziani outlines underground queer night clubs as utopias where\nsocial structures are reversed: queer folks are in charge. My work engages with the material aesthetics\nfound in these scenes\, exploring the fluidity of nighttime spaces where colored lights illuminate\nglittery surfaces as day shifts to night. \nIn my recent series Queer as Water\, I explore the queer potential of the beach\, referencing it as a\nspace suspended outside social hierarchies\, drawing on Hannah Freed-Thall’s Modernism at the\nBeach. Beach ecologies embody specific textural decay\, visualized through crumbling cement\, pitted\nsurfaces\, and pearlescent growths similar to lichen and barnacles. \nThrough improvisation\, my work engages with the resistant spirit of beaching\, wherein queer folks\ngather in industrial settings. My sculptures tell stories of our watery\, material future through a lens\nthat portrays water as a mystical\, queer force. Through decay and transformation\, my work reflects\nthe playful tenacity embodied by queer communities alongside resistant ecologies. \n__________ \nKenzie Wells (they/them) is a mixed-media sculptor\, fabricator\, and educator currently based in\nWashington\, D.C. They are a lover of all animals\, co-parenting 5 pets with their partner\, and has a\nrobust collection of little-things-found-on-the-ground. Wells has attended the Wassaic Project Artist\nResidency\, Oxbow School of Art and Artists’ Residency\, and Penland School of Craft. They have\nexhibited nationally in galleries\, including: SPRING/BREAK Art Show\, New York\, MoCA Tucson\, The\nUniversity of Arizona Museum of Art\, and Charlotte Street Foundation\, Kansas City\, MO. Originally\nfrom Knoxville\, TN\, Wells received their BFA in 2015 from the University of Tennessee\, and MFA in\n2020 from the University of Arizona.
URL:https://relayridge.org/event/queer-as-water-kenzie-wells/
LOCATION:Relay Ridge Collaborative Artist Space\, 4124 Mckinley St. NE\, Knoxville\, TN\, 37917\, United States
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