Kelly Kristin Jones: nwl
NWL
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The Luminary is pleased to present its fall exhibition nwl, co-curated in collaboration with The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). This exhibition emerged from conversations between Stephanie Koch, Interim Executive Director of The Luminary, and Simon Wu, co-curator and Program Manager of TRII, reflecting on the role of white people in dismantling whiteness. Too often, it seems, exhibitions rely on the crucial work of non-white people to critique whiteness. How can white people dismantle white supremacy within themselves and their own communities, and what would that look like in an exhibition format?
Kelly Kristin Jones (b. 1984) has made work in photography, sculpture, and performance for the last five years that reflect on white women's role in upholding and promoting white supremacy. By offering a more evident diagnosis of the problem, she seeks to create space for alternatives. Exhibited for the first time in St. Louis, nwl brings together new and existing work from Jones that draws on various sites: the domestic, the monument, and the media, for the ways that nice white ladies (or nwls) subconsciously uphold the aesthetics of white dominance, spatialize their supremacy, and place themselves in proximity to power.
In her Dodging Tool series, Jones first began exploring the process by which white women have memorialized white supremacy through public monuments. Each black-and-white photograph features a blank, white geometric form, which, as it covers, also suggests the underlying whiteness that these monuments seek to uphold. The white form is also reminiscent of a dodging tool, which within photographic processes, lightens the image, speaking to the photography's role to image and distribute flows of white power.
Jones continues this research for two new bodies of work presented at The Luminary. The photographic series Untitled presents outlines of Grecian urns and shapes cut out over scenes lit by the light of the moon and the installation Impulses of the mob, which features cut-out images of white women's hands as they hold on to various contested monuments. The gestures abstract the parasitic and mutually destructive relationship white women have to white supremacy.
For Jones, catalogs and magazine ads provide a site to consider her questions on the racial bias of photography and its role in reinforcing white femininity. A smiling blonde girl looks over her shoulder with a Mickey Mouse backpack. A sunset over a field of cotton advertises a plantation wedding. A Greco-Roman column made into an Urban Outfitters candle. Enlarged to expose the halftone process's dot pattern, Jones demands that we probe these seemingly innocuous images. Upon a deeper look, one notices the subtle visual cues of white supremacy. This subtlety provides white women an outlet to put themselves in proximity to this supremacy and defend the claims of their complicity in its promotion.
These image-based works complement Jones' sculptural project, A view from home built from neoclassical urns collected from the homes of suburban white women. Classical forms universally echo the ideal of a powerful and stable hierarchy. From temples that house Greek and Roman gods to America's capitals and plantations to our suburban homes, the architectural tradition relies on reaffirming whiteness as the supreme power. A view from home exaggerates the aesthetic of Grecian columns often found in domestic interior spaces with stacked domestic urn planters built of resin and fiberglass.
Support for this exhibition has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Missouri Arts Council, the Regional Arts Council, Art and Education Council, Via Art Fund, and the Wagner Foundation.
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Kelly Kristin Jones creates photo-based work rooted in a feminist revisionist approach to history. Time-based, collaborative and still works operate by blocking prevailing “master” narratives. Each action embraces the efforts to remove, reinterpret, and restore landscape. Addressing the slipperiness of both medium and myth, her photographic interruptions highlight problematic relationships around space and story. Jones earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and served as a Post-MFA Faculty Photography Fellow at the University of Georgia in 2013. She is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships including a 2022 City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artists Program Grant, 2021 Illinois Arts Council Agency Grant, a 2019 LATITUDE residency and a 2019 Luminarts Cultural Foundation Project Grant. She was a featured artist in the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial and will have her first book published next year with SKYLARK EDITIONS.
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Tour dates: Available beginning in January 2023
Number of artists: 1
Number of artworks: at least 35
Space requirements: Approximately 2,000 sq. ft -
1. Dodging Tool #5, 2018
Archival piezographic print
20” x 30”
2. Dodging Tool #43, 2018
Archival piezographic print
20” x 30”
3. Dodging Tool #23, 2018
Archival piezographic print,
20” x 30”
4. Dodging Tool #16, 2019
Archival piezographic print
20” x 30”
5. Dodging Tool #34, 2019
Archival piezographic print
20” x 30”
6. Dodging Tool #12, 2019
Archival piezographic print
20” x 30”
7. Turkey in the Straw, 2022
Archival pigment print
42.5” x 42”
8. A warm stone, 2022
Archival pigment print
17” x 21”
9. Better Homes & Gardens, 2022
Archival pigment print
48” x 52”
10. Multinational lifestyle retail corporation, 2022
Archival pigment print
32” x 25”
11. True Match, 2022
Archival pigment print
70” x 16”
12. A belief rather than a memory, 2022
Archival pigment print
49” x 40”
13. His smile didn’t reach his eyes, 2019
Archival pigment print
20” x 30”
Edition 2 of 5
14. Founding Father, 2019
Archival pigment print
39” x 27”
15. Sky Falling, 2020
Archival pigment print
31” x 21
16. I was aware of him before he cleared his throat (he came up from behind), 2018
Archival pigment print
26” x 38”
Edition 2 of 5
17. For the people, 2018
Archival pigment print
32” x 21”
18. Untitled (Sun stand still), 2021
Archival pigment print
20” x 16”
Edition of 3
19. Untitled (From pillar to post), 2021
Archival pigment print
16” x 20”
Edition of 3
20. Untitled (Place in the sun), 2021
Archival pigment print
20” x 16”
Edition of 3
21. Soldier Field, 2022
Archival pigment print
16.5” x 20.8”
22. Charm School Handbook, 2022
Detail of found silver gelatin photograph from the Wendy Charm School, 1960
25” x 16.5”
Wrigleyville, 2022
Archival pigment print
16.5” x 19”
23. St. Louis, 2022
Archival pigment print
16.5” x 19.5”
Your social security, 2022
detail of found silver gelatin photograph from the Wendy Charm School, 1960
16.5” x 21.7”
24. Feminine appeal, 2022
Detail of found silver gelatin photograph from the Wendy Charm School, 1960
20.5” x 16.5”
Milwaukee, 2020
Archival pigment print
19.5” x 16.5”
25. How to talk to boys, 2022
Detail of found silver gelatin photograph from the Wendy Charm School, 1960
16.5” x 22”
26. Don’t die and don’t go steady, 2022
Detail of found silver gelatin photograph from the Wendy Charm School, 1960
20” x 16.5”
Chicago, 2022,
Archival pigment print
20.5” x 16.5”
27. Forest Park, 2022
Archival pigment print
20” x 16.5”
Don’t blame your mother, 2022
Detail of found silver gelatin photograph from the Wendy Charm School, 1960
25” x 16.5”
28. Untitled (Winter Solstice II), 2021
Archival pigment print
16” x 20”
Edition of 3
29. Untitled (The plague), 2021
Archival pigment print
16” x 20”
Edition of 3
You’ve got nice legs, kid, 2018
Archival pigment print
32” x 25”
Untitled, 2022
Found silver gelatin photographs
12” x 10 “ each
30. A view from home, 2022
Site-specific installation resin, plaster, steel, sandbags
Dimensions variable
31. Untitled (David), 2022
Archival pigment print
33” x 27”
exhibition documentation
