Artist Statement

My work is an attempt to understand the world, what came before and what is happening in the present. I focus on the prevalence of and importance given to certain images which perpetuate harmful normative ideologies in the west. Certain images are given more value and are shown more than others. This fixation of ideals and purity that began in Western Europe was taken to new extremes in America. A false ideal was established, storing itself in images and symbols which reinforce a single and dominant experience. Who a person should be and what a person should look like relied on myth to carry what was never truth forward.

These limiting narratives have become the main characters of my work. As I examine what these characters mean and what ideologies they carry with them, I hold them up to my
life. The knight, angel, court jester, noble woman, and muscle man are the main characters I use in my work. Each speaks to hidden myths, larger ideologies that problematically exist inhibiting our movement forward. I challenge these images and the underlying power structures that have influenced my life.

Self-exploration and unknowing has become an important part of my life. My artistic process begins by drawing these characters over and over, spending time with them, trying to understand them. Agency, in an established world, is found by cutting up these drawings and reconstructing them to create a different story. Limitations of the past are cut apart and rearranged, challenging what once was, opening up space for something new.

*****

Bio

SK Reed (she/they) is an artist/curator/organizer/educator who was born in a small lake town just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. They are now in graduate school at the University of Kansas and live in Kansas City, KS. She runs AltU, an alternative space currently acting as a low-stakes book club. She has exhibited locally and across the United States.