Let's give a warm welcome to our second Visiting Artist of 2023, Kris Rumman. Kris is a Palestinian-American artist who creates sculpture, performance, and installations that act as impermanent fugitives. Appearing as temporary inhabitants and curious students of its visitors, her work often uses mirror and reflection to track, surveil, guide, and comply with its witnesses. Captivated by the materials of architecture, authority and chance (Inshallah), her work is migratory, situationally responsive, and inextricably linked to the geopolitics where she lives. Kris will be with us March 18 through April 5.
In early 2020, Erie Arts & Culture launched a visiting artist residency program in collaboration with Long Road Projects. Through this program, Erie Arts & Culture and Long Road Projects provide contemporary artists with dedicated time and space to reflect, research, and create new bodies of work – outside of their usual environments. This program also creates opportunities for new perspectives and creative processes to be shared, which in turn positively impacts the cultural and creative landscape in Northwestern Pennsylvania.
This visiting artist residency program is made possible through the generous support of a privately funded grant from The Erie Community Foundation.
Residency Plan:
"My art practice arises from a love for nimble problem solving, the tug of war with material and my ongoing obsession with architecture as the embodiment of cultural values. I create sculpture, performance, installations and interactive projects that act as impermanent fugitives in search of belonging.
The Erie Arts & Culture Residency drew me in because of the city’s history, geography and its changing demographics. I grew up on the other end of Lake Erie and feel a deep affinity with this region and its complex evolution.
While there, I am eager to continue the development of Watchers, a project that embarks on the question of belonging using Google Maps as a tool. This project searches for personal homes using Google Street View and in response, takes the form of architectural models, video recordings, paintings, and installations. I intend to approach this residency by taking the role of Artist as Detective, in which I learn, listen and gather information about Erie’s role as a resettlement community and its designation as a Certified Welcoming Place.
Using Google Maps, I have been remotely visiting Palestine and my family's home for more than a decade. I have a conflicting relationship with this as a tool for personal access while simultaneously aware of its power to reimagine places through new digital cartography. When access is limited, I wonder how this tool shapes my relationship to my contemporary homeland? Can my own process of discovery be a catalyst for others to explore their own personal stories and histories?"
About the Artist:
Kris Rumman is a Palestinian-American artist who creates sculpture, performance, and installations that act as impermanent fugitives. Appearing as temporary inhabitants and curious students of its visitors, her work often uses mirror and reflection to track, surveil, guide, and comply with its witnesses. Captivated by the materials of architecture, authority and chance (Inshallah), her work is migratory, situationally responsive, and inextricably linked to the geopolitics where she lives.
Raised in Toledo, Ohio, the birthplace of the Studio Glass Movement, she began her nearly two decade long relationship with glass. She graduated with a BFA from Bowling Green State University in 2008 and an MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture in 2018.
Rumman has exhibited and made performances across the United States and internationally including UrbanGlass (NYC) Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery (Nashville, TN), Strohl and Fowler-Kellogg Art Center (Chautauqua, NY), Project Gallery (Ann Arbor, MI), Georgetown Space (Washington D.C), Ohio Craft Museum (Columbus, OH), Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, OH), Temple Contemporary, Little Berlin, Conwell Dance Theater, and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA) Glass Studio (Kowloon, Hong Kong) and Abate Zanetti Gallery (Murano, Italy). She has taught at Chautauqua Institution, Pratt Fine Art Center, The Toledo Museum of Art, Salem Community College and Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University.
Rumman has received international awards and grants, including support from The Velocity Fund through Temple Contemporary and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Laurie Wagman Prize in Glass, and recognition from the Glass Arts Society, naming her the 2019 Saxe Emerging Artist. Kris earned her MFA at Tyler School of Art at Temple University and her BFA from Bowling Green State University.
Most recently, Rumman has been awarded a collaboration with Pilkington NSG, a global glass manufacturer, to actualize her project Body-Building, which debuted at the Center for Visual Arts, the Toledo Museum of Art.
She currently lives and works in NYC.
