KRISTINA DAVIS
Statement
My work discusses sex, but sex on no uncertain terms. Through conceptual installations the viewer is invited into the abstract space of the sex worker, a discordant milieu of conflicting terms of existence. Often sexual violence is present within the work, interwoven with undeniable confidence and vulnerability accustomed to the American sex worker. Emotional parallels vie for ascendency. In a world that has insisted on a binary understanding of pure and impure sex, my work stretches out the kinks and exposes the gradient of human experience. Deeply personal and indicative of the treatment of women, girls, and queered bodies in our culture, this work is layered. It does not intend on changing minds but opening them.
My work gives a place to overlooked voices, it creates an unassuming space where the viewer engages and finds themselves between the lines. This connects them to the subject in a way they may not come into on their own. Using text as a visual vessel, I suppose nothing, I form—with a questioning nature that suggests hope, but will not settle for prejudice. I suggest through experiential and immersive artwork, a possibility, an alternative, a collective voice, one that includes you as part of the solution. The life of the sex worker is deeply connected to society, yet, shunned. Existing only a degree or two away from others, we are students, cousins, mothers, ex-partners, queers, queens, and whores. With visual art I acknowledge my place in something crucial. I carry my responsibility through art and activism, with hopes that you will too, see yourself to be present in it.
Biography
Kristina Davis is a classically trained printmaker who often deviates from the medium to create immersive spaces. Guided by life experiences she shares a crass candor with a poets approach. Throughout her career she has used activism to guide her artistic compass. Finding solace in the artistic process she is able to share with the viewer the intimate details of being a motherly, art making, freight hopping, sex work-revolutionary-squatter-goddess. She is currently marking a critical mess at The Pennsylvania State University, School of Visual Arts and can be found in the obscure discount isle at any local craft store.