Krista Dragomer

KRISTA GESTURES

{As she speaks she raises her hands, her gestures are strong, precise and sharp. She looks at and through the invisible forms she illustrates with her hands as she describes how literature, symbiotic relationships, philosophy and metaphysics intricately blend together to alchemize into her work.}

Krista Dragomer is a creator of worlds. She doesn’t let the parameters or segmental classifications stop her from making. She choses her discipline based on the idea and on the project, all the while her unique voice echoes through it all. I speak with her before an upcoming show.

BR- What are the influences or inspiration with your most recent work?

{As she puts her head back to think, her borealis, crystal-like eyes demand attention, while contrasting the warm, low light of the room we’re sitting in.}

KD- I’ve been thinking a lot about kin. This is something I really love about multispecies work and multispecies ethnography -- the way it looks beyond human exceptionalism to relationships between species and within species. Ants have culture and Antelopes have culture. I’m particularly interested in the recent work of the feminist sociologist Donna Haraway. She writes on all the different ways in which (non-human) culture is being created and recreated and adapted because of the human impact on environment. It’s not that humans are intentional and other creatures are instinctual or reactive. There are all kinds of ways that changes are happening and adaption is happening, so that all our lives are a complicated mix of adaptation and intentionality. And there’s a lot more agency happening on all levels.

The other topic that interests me a great deal recently is relationality. There are some very interesting political moves and ecological moves that are happening, so I found this to be a very exciting area because in the past as an artist I thought I had to choose a cause, like I had to be an ecological artist or focused on feminism or focused on racism but I couldn't do all of them. However to be a conscious person in the world you have to see that they're all related. If you are exploiting women it's related to resources, it's related to politics, they're all together. That intersection is the most exciting to me right now.

BR- I can see those topics blended in the worlds you create, especially in your creatures.

KD- Yes, I make a lot of weird creatures...there’s always something wrong with their bodies. There’s something growing out of it, there’s extra limbs, there’s a hole, there’s something leaking, there’s an extra head...however they are in context to what is “natural” to them. In our reality it might be weird but in that visual space it’s not wrong. There is an innate truth to it, even though there is a head made out of a mushroom and is leaking motor oil or something. There is a weirdness that becomes more real to me.

BR- Do you think it’s important to lead a viewer in a desired direction in hopes that they get or connect the intended narrative? Or do you let them to their own devices?

KD- I think it’s pretty delicate, if you lead too much it’s propaganda. I don’t want to close things down. I don’t want to create an echo chamber, that’s not interesting to me. Otherwise I could just write everything down on a piece of paper and hand it out. Why bother making the art? Instead I look to make something that can provoke. I feel pretty confident that I can do that. I know I can elicit a reaction in people to the point that they’re going to have curiosity. A sensual engagement, aesthetic generosity and curiosity is the best combination that I can mix together in my work. As long I can provide enough, then people can create a little spider web of their own within all of that, then I’m happy.

BR- Where do you think your work “fits in” the contemporary art conversation?

KD- I often felt like I had to choose between a whimsical art that is connected to dreams...and childhood...and fantasies and into all of that. Or something that seems more serious, researched based and project based that’s connected to whatever contemporary/intellectual conversation that is happening. I felt like I had to do one or the other, and that I could do one or the other. For the first time I feel like they don’t feel separate to me. My weird whimsical creature drawings are totally related to these sociological, political, ethical conversations. They don’t seem separate to me anymore. They can be aesthetically exciting. They can fun to look at and they can be dark in a Pan’s Labyrinth way, and they can be connected to intellectual processes like how we liberate ourselves from very reductive narratives about who we are connected to and how we survive cooperatively.

BR- {There is a certain magnetism you can’t help but have towards Krista’s drawings. You can feel the passion. I asked her about her connection with the act of drawing. Her eyes light up, as she describes her earliest memories of drawing. Her face transforms into one of a child, the same way it would for most of us describing the first time we were on a swing set.}

KD- I love drawing! I relate to drawing on so many different levels. It’s connected to the hand in a way you can really feel. So it has a relationship to a thread, which connects to my love of fiber. It has a relationship to a sculptural space and an imaginative space. I spent most of my time as child daydreaming, imagining worlds...drawing is so connected to that. Drawing connects to idiosyncratic languages. And to secret languages.

BR- There seems to be a strong feeling of story or a sense of your characters re-appearing and having and a shared dialogue...How important is narrative to your work?

KD- It’s a substrate, it’s in there as a foundational element...I believe that it’s important that I create a field of relationality that a viewer can look at and come up with connections between ideas and images. They can draw their own conclusions from that. It doesn’t have to be the same as mine. But it is important that I know where I’m going. There’s not a story that people need to follow, but there are these little threads, like those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. {She closes her eyes and smiles}

BR- Those books were the best! Did you like them when you were little?

KD- {Head slowly shaking} I hated those books...they always felt so unsatisfying. {...she says low and deep, almost only for herself to hear}

BR- Ha, ha, ha, did you ever cheat? And preview the outcome?

KD- I didn’t. {smirking}, I never looked ahead. My fate was my fate.

CHOOSING HERSELF

BR- Tell me about your rouge attack on open studios near you that we were talking about the other day. (Both of us start laughing)...So what did you do to “participate?”

KD- {Abruptly with a tone of defiance, swagger and ownership} So yeah, I crashed open studios...That’s a bunch of bullshit. I have to pay people who own buildings in order to show my art?! That’s ridiculous...so many people are profiting off of artists. I don’t need permission form those Mother F’ers {a friend told her that she should register next time so not to upset someone in charge. Her response was beautiful...} Register? Really? Is that what Patti Smith would do? Would she register? No. So I set up my table outside. Would any of our art hero’s of the past submit a power point presentation and wait to be chosen for open studios? No...no.

{Both of us laughing through the story of her ordering a table that was way too small to set up outside open studios. I ask her if she made any connections.}

KD- Yes I sold work and ended up with some commissions. It’s important to put your work out there. Your work won’t be seen if it’s just in your studio. Show it to people. Don’t wait for curator to come to you. Choose yourself.

LINES

Krista’s work has a magnetic grotesque sensuality that pulls you into an unpredictable world where the Id, peril and hope all fight for dominance. Nature isn’t just alive, it’s the ultimate creator and destroyer. Plants, animals and humans share the fight for control, creating a new type of being, all drawn with lean, muscular, elegant lines and savage shadows. Her creatures and forms seem to move slowly across a fading landscape while fiercely fighting for their survival. The foliage offers hope for life and at the same time threatens all else that try to exist.

-By Doniven Lucas