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Forever in Your Debt
kelli rae adams
March 6 - May 2, 2020
Opening: First Friday, March 6, 2020
6:00 - 9:00 pm
Belger Crane Yard Studios 2011 Tracy Avenue Kansas City, MO 64108
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| Kelli Rae Adams, Forever in Your Debt, Stoneware bowls, 2019 Photo
credit: artist |
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| | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Kansas City, MO— Belger Crane
Yard Studios is pleased to present Forever in Your Debt, an interactive
installation by Kelli Rae Adams, opening First Friday, March 6, 2020 from 6-9 p.m.
The installation remains on view through May 2, 2020.
Within her
interactive installations, Kelli Rae Adams utilizes a variety of media
including clay, concrete, food and video to create works that can be touched,
eaten, heard and sometimes broken or dissolved.
Forever in Your Debt features a
floor installation of 600 6” stoneware bowls, some of which contain loose
change, and 3 large mixed-media sheets composed of dollar bills, watercolor,
gouache, graphite and resin. Through
symbol, metaphor and collective action, Forever in Your Debt references
the U.S. student loan debt, totaling over 1.5 trillion dollars and affecting
more than 44 million Americans.
Visitors are
invited to participate by offering mixed change sufficient to fill a pint-sized
bowl. In return, participants will
receive one of the bowls from the installation once the project is
complete. In her project statement, Adam
states, “Through this collaborative act of collection, we give visibility and
voice to the insidious nature of this burden and its broader implications for
the lives of Americans – the subtle, energetic burdens as well as those that
are more readily apparent.” |
| | | | Kelli Rae Adams, Forever in Your Debt, Stoneware bowls, 2019 Photo
credit: artist |
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Artist Statement
"In my work, I utilize media as varied as clay, concrete, food and video to create works that can be touched, eaten, heard and sometimes even broken or dissolved. These works invite those who encounter them to reflect on the realities of time, value, and labor; of vulnerability and impermanence; and of reward and sacrifice. The art is rooted firmly in direct personal experience: the bone-rattling sound of porcelain dominoes as they fall, the quiet beauty of a clay coin disintegrating in water, the sensation of wet porcelain underfoot, the exchange of participants' time and labor for my own. Through this range of activity, I encourage heightened awareness of the dynamics governing the most basic aspects of our lives, specifically the economics of human existence.
As collaborators in the activation of my installations, viewers have the opportunity to become complicit in the life story of the works. Viewing and handling, perhaps unmaking or breaking the works, visitors are given time and space to consider and assess the values of materials, their states and aesthetic forms, and the artistic labor required to produce them - each deciding for themselves what constitutes a valuable experience or exchange.
Positing currency as a technology of trust, my present research examines our existing forms of currency and systems of exchange. It probes the increasing intangibility that characterizes our transactions with entities both personal and institutional, and it considers the effects of both prevailing systems and emerging technologies on the ways we value labor and distribute resources. Through participatory artworks developed via processes of ongoing research, generative dialogue and public iteration, I highlight and interrogate the salient economic issues of our time, namely wealth inequality, the minimum wage debate and the student debt crisis."
Bio
Kelli Rae Adams utilizes clay in various states of permanency often alongside additional materials to create installation-based works that examine prevailing economic systems and probe our existing relationships to labor, currency and value. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues such as the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design (Washington, DC), the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University (Providence, RI), the Wassai Project (Wassaic, NY) and the Museum of International Ceramic Art (Denmark). She has been a fellow at the Halcyon Arts Lab (Washington, DC) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (Amherst, VA) and artist-in-residence at Tlacopac International Artist Residency (Mexico), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, NE) and Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center (Denmark), among others. In 2019, she served as Arts Envoy to Honduras for the US Department of State, lecturing & teaching in Tegucigalpa and jurying the XVIII Central American Sculpture and Ceramics Biennial. Her study of ceramics began in Japan, where she apprenticed over a period of five years with Tetsuro Hatabe, a master potter in the Karatsu tradition. Kelli holds an MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Visual Arts and Spanish from Duke University, and she has served as faculty at RISD. |
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| | About Belger Arts: Since 2000, the Belger Arts Center has encouraged viewers to explore, question, and deepen their understanding of art and of the world around them. Drawing upon the extensive John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation collection as well as a rich variety of local, national, and international artists, the Belger Arts Center has staged over 70 large-scale exhibitions that represent some of the best in contemporary art.
In 2013, Belger Arts expanded the Foundation’s commitment to the creative process by opening Belger Crane Yard Studios, an arts complex dedicated to providing studio and exhibition space for artists. A range of programming in ceramics education, in addition to the Red Star Residency program and Crane Yard Clay ceramics supply store, has made Belger a center for contemporary art.
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For more information and high resolution images please contact the gallery at: Gallery@BelgerArts.org
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