The only way out is in.

The big question that moves me is: How does whiteness impact whites? It's clear white supremacy is a misery-producing machine for people of color, and how does it make whites miserable?

I experience my art practice as an ongoing unraveling of the inquiry, like being inside the big question, and the interior of it is like an expansive railway system. I'm navigating the tracks, asking questions, and finding new ways to articulate what I'm learning and experiencing. 

Learning and unlearning aren't distinct poles on a spectrum. They are two sides of the same coin. I believe this sentiment brings us to our current moment with race in the US — we are in a messy transition of learning, unlearning, and rebuilding, and it's not coming easy.

As an artist, I want to take some ownership of the learning-to-unlearn journey in a way that deals with my experience in my time while participating in the other formal decisions artists confront while producing art objects. I would need an additional 400 words to include all the conceptual antecedents for my practice, folks like W.E.B. Du Bois, Fannon, Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, Édouard Glissant, Frank Wilderson, bell hooks, James Baldwin, David Roediger, Lauren Berlant, and paragraphs more. Similarly, I would need more space and time to share proper love for the antecedent artists I look to in my practice. These tracks are rich with inspirations like Adrian Piper, James Luna, Coco Fusco, David Hammons, Supervert, Laurel Nakadate, Robert Gober, Rashid Johnson, Ugo Rondinone, Diana al-Hadid, Richard Tuttle, Alberto Burri, Thomas Houseago, and so many more.

The affect of my practice is directed inward. I make objects rich with intensity and feeling, playful with time, inherently personal, and rooted in spirit.

Narrative Bio

Entry Point

As an undergrad at the University of California Santa Barbara, I found my entry point into art-making in 1999. At that time, I became interested in critical theory by studying performance, video, and new media under artist and mentor Kip Fulbeck. I'll never forget Kip's signature challenge to his students, "Tell me something non-transferable — tell me something that is uniquely yours."

What was unique to me was my condition of albinism. Of course, I had always felt that, but I had never explored it earnestly. What was albinism exactly? Who else had it? What did people think about people who did have it, etc.? In 2001, I graduated with a BA in Fine Art. I left UCSB with a powerful personal narrative examining how the condition of albinism defines a person racially as white while simultaneously marginalizing them as others. 

The work I produced during this period was primarily experimental time-based video. However, it was through spoken word that I was able to play into a deeper meaning of myself. I wasn't a poet or a performer, so the medium pushed me into a vulnerable place. In "Green Slip, 2001," I played back to the moment in my life when I first realized I was white, and more specifically, how being a person with albinism made my whiteness visible to me.

My inspirations during this period included seminal artists like David Hammons, Felix Gonzales-Torres, James Luna, Coco Fusco, Linda Montano, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Adrian Piper, Martha Rosler, Matthew Barney, Paul Pfieffer, Saul Williams, and Tehching Hseih. 

Widening My Aperture

In 2003, I moved to Chicago to attend the MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My advisors there included heavy critical thinkers like Barbara DeGenevieve and Claire Pentecost. I remain grateful for my experience and for being challenged directly by the faculty at SAIC. I remember one particular meeting with Barbara on one of my darker days, where she yelled, "Yes, Kris! That's the real fear. Now you're getting somewhere!". In those years, I was encouraged to widen my aperture into art theory and criticism and develop a richer artistic range. I learned how to be a visual storyteller from Joseph Grigley. Tiffany Holmes taught me how to test and build concepts over time. I practiced creative writing with Rosellen Brown. And Gregg Bordowitz showed me many powerful lessons in framing artistic ideas, especially ones that blurred art-making and activism. My disciplines branched out to sculpture and photography. And my language shifted in tone from a personal narrative to a broader cultural questioning of white racial identity.

In effect, I had become more race-conscious. I was seeing myself in racial terms. I was white and also a person with albinism. I left the MFA program at SAIC with a more focused line of flight for my practice. I was working toward a deeper understanding of how albinism shaped me as a result of also being white. 

For myself, how has albinism changed my understanding of racial dynamics? Where was I complicit with personal or institutional systems of white racism as a citizen? What was racial ideology doing to my mind, imagination, and behaviors as an artist?

For example, how had looked at black artists (who were already working in this complex space of racial identity) moved and enriched the objects I was creating in self-conscious ways? After all, racism is a visual construction. And as a visual artist, what was I adding to the construct, the critique, and the conversation? I developed a narrative on whiteness from an alternate racial perspective through this frame. And when people encountered my work, I wanted them to leave questioning their own centralized and dominant narratives of whiteness. 

Complicating Identity with Time

While at SAIC I also became interested in artists and philosophers working on concepts of time. I was reading Deleuze, Bergson, Kubler, Serres, and Masumi.

Exploring their theories of becoming, movement, sequence, rapprochement, and intensity helped me expand to further psychological boundaries. For me, layering time on race made room for imaginative and aesthetic choices that otherwise felt restricted by the pointedness of race alone.

In "We've got to fight the powers that be., 2005," I repurposed two working fondue fountains, replaced the chocolate with sunscreen, and housed them each in their custom-fabricated metal container. I had the containers polished and painted at an auto body shop. When installed on the wall, side by side, and protruding outward, the two sunscreen fountains resembled a pair of utilitarian drinking fountains. The fountains spun and spewed white sunscreen while filling the gallery with smells of tropical lotion and sounds of whirling motors. The sculptures were sensory, inviting "use." Some visitors stuck their fingers in the falls to catch a little sunscreen. Thematically, fragility and innocence were two aspects of whiteness that I was exploring. And I liked using sunscreen as a material because it incited feelings of nostalgia, youth, and innocence. But the material also had an everyday and pragmatic use — protecting vulnerable melanin. In these sculptures, the fountains gave the sunscreen an unexpected playful quality, creating space for contemplation between the thoughts and feelings the work evoked. 

This piece's narratives, materials, and decisions represent my work from UCSB through SAIC. The affect of my practice was inward. I was making objects rich with intensity and feeling, playful with time, inherently personal, and rooted in spirit.

Spirit, I believe, is where the feelings about ourselves reside. I had always been attracted to artists who played in this space, who stirred spirits and challenged viewers with inspiring, fantastic, personal, and even humorous works. My inspirations at this time included artists like William Pope L., Robert Gober, Laurel Nakadate, Nick Cave, Sun Ra, Lee Bontecou, Glenn Ligon, Kieth Edmier, Duane Hanson, Rudolf Stingel, Urs Fischer, Vija Celmins, Clifford Still, Catherine Yass, and Douglas Gordon. 

Putting Critical Theory to Practice

In 2005, I moved from Chicago to New York, where I currently live and work. I was fortunate to move here with a fantastic group of friends: Rashid Johnson, Sheree Hovsepian, Stephanie Powell, Robert Davis, Angel Otero, Vincent Dermody, Jamisen Ogg, Heidi Norton, and Natasha Gornik. I also met Supervert early and fortuitously in New York. I became friends with Alex Ernst, Luis Gispert, and Joel Mesler through Rashid. In one way or another, all these people have helped shape my practice today. I'm grateful for their friendships and guidance.

My studio is in Bushwick. I've worked on and off in the same building (6 Stanwix St) for nearly 14 years. I've always made progress, but art-making for me happens in fits and starts. 

Sculpting with Clay

In 2015, I started working with clay, specifically red self-hardening clay. I fell in love with the material. Working with it became cathartic. I started experimenting by creating large flat tablets. To do this, I would place a 20-pound block of wet clay on a 6'x6' sheet of canvas, then use my hands, forearms, and body weight to press the clay down into thin flat surfaces. I would then cut out rectangular and circular shapes, carve markings into their surfaces, and set them aside to self-harden.

I saw many parallels in the clay's hardening process with my thinking about memory and recall. In particular, the gradient of variance between a lived experience and the recollection of that experience. Joseph Grigley had great phrasing: "Remembering is a difficult thing to do, but someone has to do it." I liked how the clay responded in similar ways. For example, my objects would curl, pinch, shrink, tighten, and even crack as they hardened. The results were like recollections of their original forms. The unpredictability of the hardening process felt human to me. Wet clay exposed to air and human touch shifted quickly from malleable to fragile.

Drawing with Clay

An unexpected aspect of working with pottery clay was discovering a beautiful pink residue left behind on the canvas from the pressing and carving. One day I looked more intently at the canvases and was inspired by the accumulated marks. I started experimenting with more mark-making, using the clay directly on the canvas, which eventually led me to pin the canvas to the wall and use the clay in my hands to draw on the surface. Drawing with clay was a notable iteration, from making sculptures with clay to also making drawings on canvas with clay. Over time I collected a set of studio tools that I used for smoothing, swiping, and scraping the clay. Whether drawing or sculpting, my mark-making felt like smoothing things over, massaging the material, pressing, pushing, and carving. In this process, I felt more like a masseuse than a draftsman or sculptor. The intimacy with the material was essential to the emotional qualities of the work. The fragility of the rendered clay emphasized the emotional fragility of the content.

Shaping Time

In 2016, a body of work came together in a series called Shape of Time. About time, I was interested in the concept of same-self time. That is, I wanted to be of my time. In particular, what did it mean to be white in my time? That same year, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, "White people are, in some profound way, trapped," he doubled down. "It took generations to make them white, and it will take more to unmake them." That resonated with me. I felt like a white person on the trajectory of becoming less white. And this idea of "becoming," which was very Deleuzian, was already a big part of my thinking and practice. Now that I've become white, how do I become other? 

Important to note that also, at this time, white resentment politics via Trump's presidency were taking shape. Emboldened by unabashed White Nationalism, anxious whites throughout the white racial frame (systemically, culturally, and individually) felt freer than ever to speak openly of their nostalgia for an America that didn't question white dominance. MAGA. 

By 2018, there was a surge in anti-racist cultural production. Although in general, I believed that whites in my time remained largely indifferent and unmoved by what is arguably the most complex and nuanced social dilemma in the past 400 years. However, more whites at this time did seem to be actively participating in the conversation that people of color had been having for several hundred years, albeit the level of rigor in whites' responses was perfunctory.

Epiphanies

Ultimately I believe the subject of my practice is epiphany. I’m in it for the discoveries that unlock becomings. The work I make as a result is about the affect of epiphany. I use clay precisely because the material stretches and transforms, and when clay dries, it remembers what it went through and hardens and curls around those critical memories. Clay is beautiful to work with. I’m trying to “stretch out” the flash of epiphany in my studio. My goal isn’t to teach viewers anything specific. I move away from the didactic, but I am interested in creating experiences that allow viewers to get in their heads and hearts, stirring their spirits and challenging them to get inside their big questions. I’ve always been attracted to artists and artworks that direct their affect inward.

I’ve always loved how Toni Morrison talked about the characters in her stories in that learning-to-unlearning transition, “The characters in my books are always winners. Even if they drop dead, they learned something very, very important, a critical thing they learned. Their experiences are epiphanies, I think those are happy endings when you finally figure it out, and you know it. This is the life of the mind and spirit, and they win. They aren’t stupid anymore.”

I aspire to be like a character in Morrison’s novels. When I drop dead, I want to have become something other than what I am today.

View the work >

Connect online:
@krisandrews.ig

Visit the studio:
6 stanwix st brooklyn

Send me an email:
kris.andrews@gmail.com