Gently Radical Changing
Joining in Acknowledgement (detail), Reishi mushroom, weaving, 13″ x 6″ x 15″
April 27 – May 11, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, April 27 6-9pm
Poetry reading by Beata Tsosie-Peña 7:00pm
CLOSING RECEPTION: May 11, 2018 – 6:00-9:00pm
In Gently Radical Changing, Kaitlin Bryson engages with the legacy of toxic contamination and subsequent trauma in ecologies ridden with histories of environmental injustices. The work presented in the exhibition offers gestures of remediation and healing to these places, through bioremediative sculpture and performance, video, installation, and participatory workshops. In partnership with the Environmental Justice department of Tewa Women’s United, based out of Española, New Mexico, this work synergistically explores how radical environmental and social change can happen through compassionate acts of interspecies collaboration.
The work presented in the exhibition will transform and physically change throughout the duration of the show. Some works will appear and others will disappear. Viewers are encouraged to stop by throughout the exhibition run to observe the living works.
Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series
Gently Radical Changing, new works by Kaitlin Bryson is one of two exhibitions in 2018 that is part of Sanitary Tortilla Factory’s Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series. The Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series offers professional space for the culminating exhibition that defines the student’s launch into their profession as an artist. The series hopes to underscore exceptional artists attending regional institutions while highlighting Albuquerque’s historic connection to contemporary art practice.
About the Artist
Kaitlin Bryson lives and works in the high deserts of New Mexico, and has spent her life working as an artist and organic farmer. Drawing from her experience as a cultivator, her artwork illuminates the processual nature of life through the lens of transformation. Biological materials are embedded into her work so that the “finished” pieces have the potential to play, transform, and live out their own dynamic processes. Her work unfolds as restorative gestures for human and nonhuman audiences, serving as a reminder that mutability and adaptability are the common grounds we all inhabit.
Bryson received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Nevada, Reno in 2012, and is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Art & Ecology from the University of New Mexico. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at The Holland Project in Reno, Nevada, Site Santa Fe, and BioCultura in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has been performed at The Holocene in Portland, Oregon. In January of 2018 Bryson will participate in the Interface Residency Programme in Gallway, Ireland, supported by funding in part from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation.