NADA Miami 2023

KIAH CELESTE

December 5th - 9th

Ice Palace Studios, 1400 N Miami Ave, Miami

Kiah Celeste's solo presentation at NADA Miami 2023 incites an engagement with space, and visitors by staging a performance of objects in two acts, at once taking us to the moon, then back to a feckless reality on Earth, where the everyday is transformed into gizmos and gadgets of a speculative post society.

Gravitating between utopia and dystopia, otherness and familiarity of terrestrial and otherworldly atmospheres, her foreboding forms force us to a confrontation with the timeless friction between human and nature. Celeste, however, abstains from using obvious or figurative materials in order to avoid political or societal connotations, and instead looks to invoke an emotional and ethereal response.

During the first installment of the fair Celeste’s first act will catapult the booth into the euphoria of a soaring economic and global power that similarly fueled the myths of productivity in the American corporate office culture of the 60s and 70s, and the parallel promise of both power and escape offered by the “astro-obsession” with a lunar space to be conquered with technological advancements. Conversely, the second act will bring us back to Earth, facing today’s necessity to find alternative ways to integrate these relics of anthropocentric development more harmoniously with nature and its circles.

The series of sculptures We and I appear reminiscent of some of the whimsical, surrealist, yet naturalistic creations of Barbara Hepworth and Louise Bourgeois, while mysteriously holding totemic and futuristic presences as galactic sentinels. In more earthy works such as 5 Post Lashes, and A Ribbon in The Pine, Celeste seem to suggest instead an alternative poetry in the human-nature relationship: in a laborious process that took two weeks, the artist has familiarized herself with the organic material, learning the craft of the Japanese hand plane, or Kanna, eventually transforming this simplistic but gracious material into elaborated ribbons precisely, with the flick of a wrist.

Other industrial materials and combined with time, as in Blocked Window, retired from their original functionality in the corporate environment, act in opposition to the alienation of impersonal hyperproductivity, lending the viewer their aged attributes in a new context.

This opera of nomadic objects composed of equal parts innovation, concept, grit, and grace, eventually suggests an entangled system of tensions, juxtapositions and affinities also existing in the daily relationship between the individual and society, and with one’s position in the planet. Her sometimes repetitive, almost mathematical or calculated visual approach gives the impression of movement, while providing a respite from reality, to float in a sea of brief hypnotism, a moment of a lawless gut reaction, ironically at the hands of once industrial, factory made materials.

With their alien appearance of both otherworldly objects and contemporary archaeological remains, these objects appear both prophetic of the future, and reminiscent of the past, proving the artist as a profound observer of the dynamics existing in civilization between space and objects, across places and times. Celeste’s work twists our whole conception of our relation to the world post technological advancement, tinkering in itself a reference to our own collective loss in the face of capitalism and the unavoidable obsolescence of its results. Reliant on recycling and manipulating found objects and materials, her practice eventually nods to concerns of environmental sustainability, using exclusively discarded or secondhand items balanced together through tension, flexibility, and gravity, the artist asserts the cruciality of an alternative balance between natural resources and human actions and interventions in this world.

Coinciding with her solo presentation, the artist will also present an outdoor sculpture made with the support of Kindof Furniture and its kindof rebar: this amphibious piece is protected by a scuba diving suit, made of sophisticatedly engineered materials, yet appears otherworldly in its shape and function.

The resulting sculptural presence inhabits an enigmatic dimension between intimacy and alienation, being in a public space, interacting with people and sharing the environment with guests.

The work simultaneously functions as a fulcrum, testing how people will navigate the negative space around: hinting at its title, 3 Legged Marathon, it lands precariously balanced on the ground, interrupting a heavy traffic environment.

Going beyond the traditional notion of sculpture, Kiah Celeste creates something both real and equally nonsensical, that lives ominously in the material event: unapologetically embracing both the asperity of forms and accepting their inevitable obsolesce, Celeste’s sculptures succeed in staging the friction between human presence and the transient physical experience of the world

BIOGRAPHY

Living a peripatetic life since leaving her native Brooklyn, Celeste moved from her university background in photography into three-dimensional production. Kiah spent her time completing artist residencies in Barcelona, Vienna, and Frankfort (KY), as well as solo exhibitions in Chicago, New York and Louisville. Celeste’s conceptual work and research focuses on social stigmas and conditioning that have permeated her life and identity such as the neglect of Black women in America, obsession of self in the media, corruption in the medical world and medical device industry, and gentrification in Brooklyn. In 2021 Celeste presented a solo exhibition at the KMAC Museum and was selected at the 21C Museums Louisville Artadia Award. Celeste presented her first solo exhibition in 2022 at DOCUMENT, Chicago, reviewed by Artforum and her work was placed in the Speed Museum’s Permanent Collection. In 2023, Celeste had a solo show with DOCUMENT Chicago in their new flagship space in Lisbon, a two person show at Swivel Gallery, Brooklyn and was featured in a group exhibition at the Speed Museum, Louisville.

ABOUT KINDOF

Kindof uses traditional industrial material in an alternative way. The rebar emerges from concrete, giving life to functional design forms crafted for longevity and sustainability within the circular economy of steel. The product is primitive, simple, and monomaterial; the frame geometries, guided by an industrial patent, envision the use of a single uninterrupted rod. Captivated by the flexibility of the Kindof rebar, we began to envision a unique space destined to evolve into an inclusive environment that integrates biophilic principles, promotes aggregation and human interactions, providing an engaging and multisensory atmosphere through the use of Kindof's functional forms. The Kindof oasis is born, surprising, marveling, and uniting. Collaborating with an artist like Kiah Celeste contributes to fueling this aspiration. The surprise arises from the dignity that Kiah's work gives back with significant added value to waste materials, analogous to what Kindof pursues by valorizing a material that is otherwise invisible in its conventional use. Kindof rebar and Kiah Celeste set the tone for an exploration to which everyone is invited, engaging with both senses and heart, becoming an active part of the artwork.