BIO

Elektra KB, is a Colombian artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY and Berlin, Germany. KB graduated with an MFA from Hunter College in 2016 and a BFA in Visual and Critical Studies in 2012 from SVA. Her work has been written about in: ARTnews, Artfcity and Art Forum among other publications. She was named artist to watch by British newspaper The Independent. She has been a guest speaker on visual culture, social media and ‘Queer Utopias’ at NYU in 2016 and 2017. She won a DAAD award to pursue a yearlong fellowship in Berlin at UDK with artist mentor Hito Steyerl. She shows internationally and her recent projects have included: “The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless”; a solo show at BravinLee programs (NY), Moving Image (Istanbul), UP Gallery (Berlin), Croatian Association of Artists Institute, (Zagreb),‘The Water Mirror’ a curatorial project which premiered at SPRINGBREAK art show (NY). And the solo projects: ‘Bodies of Water: Body as a Prison/prison as a Body’ at the SVA Flatiron gallery (2017) and ‘Power is Abuse’ at SPRINGBREAK art show (2018). She has performed at the Queens Museum (2018) and her works have been recently acquired by the Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art in China,The Fondation Pour l'art Contemporain Salomonand are held in numerous private collections.

STATEMENT

KB’s practice is interdisciplinary encompassing mainly: Video, photography, sound, performance and textile works. Her work addresses concerns such as migration and global power dynamics trough a platform of mythology; coexisting with a documentarian and conceptualist approach. Her work takes place in the middle of two worlds: the ‘Cathara Autonomous Territory’ and our world. The Theocratic Republic of Gaia is a utopian-dystopian world; a parallel universe fighting between the tensions built on a totalitarian state and the revolutionary Cathara Insurgency, situating itself close to the political sci-fi genre. Her body of work is of a performative nature concerned with the post-colonial and decolonial discourse. It is charged with critical humor and informed by the aesthetics of colonial art tropes and the ongoing armed conflict she grew up with.

KB’s site-specific installations and works on fabric deal with: the body, gender, mobility, immigration, the nature of power, authority and its antagonists. From the prison industrial complex to authority symbols –such as the immigration checkpoint—, adding protest signs as responses and visual cues of shifting power. Exploring the meanings and relationships of the concept of power and how it manifests today in society.

Her work ties utopism, political theory, art and activism through a variety of mediums.

• CV HERE
• PORTFOLIO HERE (PDF)

Contact
Email: contact@elektrakb.com

Blog: elektrakb.blogspot.com
Instagram: instagram.com/elektrakb