This is a project/journey, an installation of 20 paintings, I started at a time when the pandemic initiated and affected people on a global scale. The situation did expose inequalities that have always existed, but became more visible.
Art is one of the possible tools to be used to create stronger communities. It can allow us not just to understand ourselves, but to understand each other at a deeper level.
The audience, in this case, my Instagram followers were invited to participate in the project, by emailing me a picture with a short description of their experience. I asked for photographs that people had taken and shared during 2020 that represented their isolated life, together with the stories behind them. I selected 20 of them to create oil paintings, consulting the depicted characters to share their emotions and how they perceived the isolation.
Our individuality can get lost in translation by the filters, guises and facades that society clothes us with. The unravelling of these fabricated identities and exterior expectations. The project is aimed at deepening an understanding of these social criteria also, which pervades the approach to a painting aesthetic, and confronting the familiarities of figuration.
Each image is painted on 40x40 cm canvas, using oil paint, a medium that I started exploring during the quarantine.
This project is a testament to the model’s trust in the painter - not merely as an artist, but as someone who has the tools to express a shared situation, a person they trust with their story.
What types of unique tensions, fears and doubts about the future have arisen? What kind of inequalities and injustices have the crisis laid bare?
I wanted to abstract the not obvious common elements from these twenty people and elevate the feelings expressed in the painting to a higher plane of thought; to build on top of this higher universal feeling for our investigation for answers.
In a drastic global climate of isolation and fear, I feel the time is right to offer these works about survival, grace, and connection.
BIOGRAPHY
Kristi is a Venice based multi-media artist who works mainly with oil paintings and mixed media works. Kristi holds a bachelor degree in Visual Arts from the IUAV and has just started creating art full time after working in different fields and jobs throughout university period.
A principal theme in Kristi’s work is the complexity of the human experience we share in the world, seen as a ‘’glorious circumstance of existence’’. She is also concerned with issues surrounding the social human behaviour looked through filters of spiritual developments. She tries to express both of these elements through her art creating the necessary mood, color, atmosphere and texture.