I am delighted to announce the artists for the 2019 MakeRoom residency season have been chosen!!!
After receiving a total of 45 impressive and varied applications from all across the United States and Canada, I’m thrilled to share the news - Kelly Kristin Jones , a photographer from Chicago, Ill. and Tyler Rai , a movement artist from Amherst Mass. have been selected to attend the MakeRoom Artist Residency in March and February of 2019. I’m looking forward to meeting Kelly and Tyler in the coming months. Both have work that is compelling and, in this case, site specific in orientation.
Kelly uses her photography as a tool to investigate what can be described as contested sites. Some of which she has identified here in the Twin Cities region of MN. Her photographs become not simply images to look upon but rather, inquiries into the dominant and presumed culture.
On her site she writes;
I use the camera to reclaim contested city space. Across the urban landscape power relations camouflaged as art are used instead to direct historical narrative. These monuments conceal state-sanctioned abuses of power. Embodied myths at public sites have led me to the idea of "healing" or reclaiming such urban spaces. Though image-based, I use a variety of methods to address contested sites including digital manipulation of photographs, on-site intervention, three-dimensional sculptural works, and performance.
Tyler is a movement artist, facilitator, and choreographer whose work focuses on relationships, land, history, first nations, and the agency of the natural world. She is hoping to spend her time at MakeRoom focusing in part on writing about her work as well as in collaboration with a local poet and songwriter, Ben Weaver whom she has known for sometime but has not had the opportunity to collaborate with.
From her site;
As a movement artist, I explore the implications between the natural and man-made, between individual and collective, between mind and matter. I emphasize the process-based nature of my work’s emergence through working in the tensions between improvised and composed material, as well as individual and ensemble motivations. The dances I make serve as site-specific performative rituals, that center embodied knowledge as the primary organizational and compositional tool.
This year’s applications were intriguing and impressive in so many ways. I was thrilled to receive 45 applicants (up eleven from last years number of 34). Such a simple and concrete way to see that the popularity of this humble offering has grown. The process of reviewing all of them and making the decision of just two applicants was not easy. I found myself drawn to the work of several artists and wish I could invite everyone to attend. However, due to the size and scale of MakeRoom, only two creatives per season are selected.
I want to personally thank each and every individual who took the time to apply. As well as all of the people who spread the word - some added it to their organizations newsletters, others shared it on Instagram and Facebook and even more simply told their friends about the opportunity and to all of you out there I am forever grateful. Thank you!!!!!
