Bio
Kelley A Meister is an interdisciplinary artist whose work combines drawing, video, and performance into installations and stand-alone films. Kelley’s work has been shown around the country and abroad in galleries, theatres, film festivals, libraries, infoshops, squats, collective houses, online, outside, and in the streets. Hir work has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Ze was a founding member of BenchPress Burlesque, a radical multi-gendered, sex-positive, queer-positive, feminist political performance troupe. Ze is also one-third of the experimental multimedia performance trio Wreck Family Productions. A commitment to social, racial, environmental, and economic justice is a through line in Kelley’s work.
Kelley also works as a teaching artist in schools, libraries, museums/cultural production centers, and community centers throughout Minnesota with COMPAS and the Science Museum of Minnesota. Ze teaches stop-motion animation, documentary and narrative filmmaking, digital photography, computer game design, circuitry, screenprinting, and more.
Kelley also works as a teaching artist in schools, libraries, museums/cultural production centers, and community centers throughout Minnesota with COMPAS and the Science Museum of Minnesota. Ze teaches stop-motion animation, documentary and narrative filmmaking, digital photography, computer game design, circuitry, screenprinting, and more.
Artist Statement
As an interdisciplinary artist, I build transformative experiences and environments that encourage empathy through a shared emotional experience or exploration. Over the last decade, my work has focused on shared worldwide issues, such as climate change and nuclear war, in order to investigate empathetic responses that emerge from global threats and existential fear. I approach my art as both a researcher and a sensitive human. Fear explored in my work is at times infused with levity to foster empathetic and understanding responses. I combine art, science, and social practice in order to cultivate empowerment as an antidote to fear through shared experiences, tools, and actions.
My artistic practice explores what constitutes natural and social landscapes as artistic material and as public engagement. Further, I am concerned with how humans impact our environments – in micro and macro ways – historically, currently, and in future possibilities. Tourism, disasters, NIMBY-mentality, resource extraction, waste storage, and American exceptionalism create entry points for my investigations. I resolve to represent things that are not tangible, including emotional responses, physical (but invisible) phenomena such as radiation or pollution, and that which is purposefully “invisibilized” by the forces of colonialism and capitalism such as mutual aid and collective empowerment.
My artistic practice explores what constitutes natural and social landscapes as artistic material and as public engagement. Further, I am concerned with how humans impact our environments – in micro and macro ways – historically, currently, and in future possibilities. Tourism, disasters, NIMBY-mentality, resource extraction, waste storage, and American exceptionalism create entry points for my investigations. I resolve to represent things that are not tangible, including emotional responses, physical (but invisible) phenomena such as radiation or pollution, and that which is purposefully “invisibilized” by the forces of colonialism and capitalism such as mutual aid and collective empowerment.