Krystal Hart
Greensboro, NCARTIST STATEMENT
Through abstraction, I navigate boundary and
spaces within the human condition. I communicate through painting, collage,
audio, and moving image. In painting and collage, I use natural and synthetic
materials that are subjected to trauma. These works of art express emotive
color fields that balance tumult with delicacy. Rhythms of drawn and painted
debris undulate in and out of varying expanses.
Through personal hardship, I began to develop a visual language for the debris of physical and psychological traumas. Through adversity, I have discovered beauty and fortitude in the resilient nature of the human spirit.
By excavating peace and conflict narratives rooted in our physical, spiritual, and psychological states I seek to deconstruct perfunctory systems. I am critical of superficial realities and systemized constructs that marginalize parts of the human condition. Aware of our culture’s inept ability in dealing with hardships, I propose spaces that nurture healing and regeneration. Hope is offered within spaces of adversity.
Storytelling is a particularly important part of African American upbringing. I rest in and rely on the values, intuitions, and the moral responsibilities through narrative that were instilled in me as I make art. Within the context of narrative, through research, dialogue, and serendipitous interactions I explore human interconnectivity.
I hope my work will allow people to see each other and themselves more honestly, more humanly. I work to cultivate more generative interconnected communities through intimate and intentional engagements.
Through personal hardship, I began to develop a visual language for the debris of physical and psychological traumas. Through adversity, I have discovered beauty and fortitude in the resilient nature of the human spirit.
By excavating peace and conflict narratives rooted in our physical, spiritual, and psychological states I seek to deconstruct perfunctory systems. I am critical of superficial realities and systemized constructs that marginalize parts of the human condition. Aware of our culture’s inept ability in dealing with hardships, I propose spaces that nurture healing and regeneration. Hope is offered within spaces of adversity.
Storytelling is a particularly important part of African American upbringing. I rest in and rely on the values, intuitions, and the moral responsibilities through narrative that were instilled in me as I make art. Within the context of narrative, through research, dialogue, and serendipitous interactions I explore human interconnectivity.
I hope my work will allow people to see each other and themselves more honestly, more humanly. I work to cultivate more generative interconnected communities through intimate and intentional engagements.
BIO
Krystal Hart is a North Carolina native. Hart received her BFA from New York Institute of Technology and is a distinguished recipient of various honors and residencies including a 2007 Chair Person Fine Arts Award for excellence in her art practice and graduating summa cum laude, a 2009 and 2012 Limner Society Residency, a 2011 and 2017 NC Regional Artist Grant, and the 2018 Mass MoCA Masters of Abstraction Workshop in Residency. Hart has a passion for serving her local and global community. Her work often provides a platform for cross-culture and cross-community experiences of a shared human condition. Her aim at shifting perspectives towards restorative and regenerative communities’ motives some of her noted exhibition participation.
Between late 2011 and 2013 Hart created works in partnership with Alamance Behavioral and Mental Health and Alamance Arts Council that involved families whose children wrestled with social and behavioral disorders. These works allowed to public the engage and learn about the often-taboo topic of mental health, the children effected and their families. In 2015 Hart’s sculpture Abner’s Tree was included in the Green Hill Gallery’s exhibition Art and Dialogue: Racial Tension in America. The glass sculpture (painted by Hart and her husband as a symbol of racial unity) sitting on a white oak base invited all walks of life to see through the work. While reflecting on the diverse viewers juxtaposed to the painting on the glass, people were also invited to release their offenses by writing and sticking them to the tree hewed base as a symbol of forgiveness and provoking community healing. The 2018 HerStory exhibition at the African American Atelier included Hart’s co-created short film Until Tomorrow. The ambiguous story of a young woman coming to terms with her memory, the sudden losses of close family members, and her now uncertain future.
Her recent social practice work Care Campaign has been a way to gather the community and encourage small acts of kindness through sending letters of hope to essential workers during the covid-19 pandemic. Letters of Hope are 5 x 7 cards created from original works Hart painted during the stay-at-home ordinance. Mindful of the stress, and for some, trauma of the season these small acts of kindness encourage and nourish hearts and minds. This work highlights caring for mind and heart health. It also reveals how interconnected our communities really are and our genuine need for one another.