Positions: New Landscapes at the Hyde Park Art Center

Featuring: Lydia Cheshewalla, Kelly Kristin Jones, Norman Long, Elsa Muñoz, zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal, and Leticia Pardo

This group exhibition features works by six Chicago-based artists who explore the potential of landscape in contemporary art to contribute to timely conversations about relationships between sites and history, place and belonging, and environmental justice and land stewardship. Working in a diverse range of media including photography, sculpture, sound, installation, and painting, the artists in the exhibition reinvent the traditional genre of landscape to explore its capacity to intervene in civic dialogs rooted in place. Positions highlights both the artist’s unique approach to engaging the landscape and how their individual identities have shaped their perspective on the histories and practices their works address. 

October 26, 2024 – February 23, 2025 in the Kanter Family Foundation Gallery at HPAC

2024 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Photography

History Loves Company

My new solo exhibition opens at Trinity College on Jan 8, 2024. Opening reception and artist talk is on January 25 at 6p.

Chicago Tribune Feature

It’s been an honor to get to know Chris Borrelli of the Chicago Tribune over the last few months. He joined me on a sweltering day in Chicago to watch me cover up a contested monument of Abe Lincoln and wrote about my ongoing Coverings project.

His piece for the Trib went live today!

Ghost in the Throat at Filter Space

Filter Photo is pleased to present Ghost in the throat, a solo exhibition by Kelly Kristin Jones.

"The neoclassical white column announces and asserts power specifically white power. Since the founding of our country, this architectural emulation of ancient “culture” has operated as a racially coded signal.

Like the carefully placed column, white women have also served and sustained the mutually constitutive relationship between aesthetics and race.

I use found materials, stage public interventions, and misapply traditional photographic tooling to try to co-opt the tools of the historically advantaged. In repurposing the column and the camera, I bear witness to the privileged narrative that pervades both civic and domestic space.

By leaning into my own matrilineage as well as the history of the photographic medium, I consider the way white women continue to serve themselves by serving the patriarchy."

In the Room at CPW

The Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) is delighted to announce the opening of In the Room, a group exhibition featuring three contemporary photographers: Kelly Kristin Jones, Jonathan Mark Jackson (2021 CPW artist-in-residence), and Ashley M. Freeby. Through their work in still photography, archival research, and family histories, these three artists explore the relationships between personal and collective memories, and in particular how public histories are made, challenged, and remade. Organized by Kingston-based writer and curator Frances Cathryn, the exhibition opens at CPW, 474 Broadway, Kingston, on Saturday, June 10, 2023, from 5-7pm.

OFF-Spring at 21C Museum Hotel Chicago

I am very honored to be included in OFF-Spring: New Generations at 21c Museum Hotel Chicago. Join us for the opening on March 2, 2023 from 6:30p - 8:30p. Alice Gray Stites, Museum Director and Chief Curator of 21c Museum Hotels, will be there! See more info here.

NWL featured on NPR

Abstractions of whiteness are in focus at the Luminary in “Kelly Kristin Jones: nwl.”

Through photography prints and sculpture, the exhibition examines how “nwl,” or “nice white ladies,” sustain white supremacy in their daily lives — whether they realize it or not.

Chicago-based artist Kelly Kristin Jones joined St. Louis on the Air to discuss the focal points of her exhibition.

“I consider what I'm doing to be a feminist revisionist action,” Jones said. “I think we often like to make white supremacy this testosterone-fueled expression, but it's just as likely to wear heels.”

NWL, FEATURING NEW AND EXISTING WORKS BY KELLY KRISTIN JONES, CO-CURATED IN COLLABORATION WITH THE RACIAL IMAGINARY INSTITUTE (TRII).

October 8 - December 10, 2022

Elevate at 21c Chicago: September 1 – October 31, 2022
Opening reception with the Artist: September 1, 6:00-7:30pm
Plinths for the People Activation: October 2022

Kelly Kristin Jones’s photo-based interventions and counter monuments unsettle well-worn imperial attributes to consider alternative vocabularies. Time-based, collaborative and still works operate by blocking prevailing “master” narratives. Each action embraces the efforts to remove, reinterpret, and restore the landscape. Addressing the slipperiness of both medium and myth, photographic interruptions highlight problematic relationships around public space and memory.

“As we continue to emerge from the initial period of global upheaval, we find ourselves in a liminal space – a transitory, in-between state of indeterminacy and ambiguity. We are neither in nor out of the pandemic and exist as a binary condition; a superimposed state of being. A sense of being in a waiting room with no windows.”

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow opens at the Design Museum of Chicago on April 15th and includes 100 Chicago artists reflecting on the past two pandemic years. Curated by Adam Brooks and Matthew Wilson, collectively working as Industry of the Ordinary, the exhibition brings together a significant cross-section of the city’s creative community for a unique event.

My documentation of a 2020 performance, Sky Falling, is included in the exhibit. This photograph was taken the day before the long-contested Christopher Columbus monument was removed from downtown Chicago. This was largely seen as the first step in the right direction and inspired the major to form the Chicago Monuments Project which concluded that 41 other monuments were also problematic. The project stalled one year later amid controversy. On March 29, 2022, Chicago’s major announced that the Columbus monument would return to the public park.

Monument Lab spotlights Plinths for the People

I have followed the work of Paul Farber and Ken Lum’s Monument Lab since its founding in 2012. I appreciate their mission to cultivate and facilitate critical conversations around the past, present, and future of monuments and have learned so much from them.

Monument Lab is a nonprofit public art and history studio based in Philadelphia working with artists, students, educators, activists, municipal agencies, and cultural institutions around the country on participatory approaches to public engagement and collective memory.

So, it is a delight to announce that Monument Lab has featured my own work around monuments! Many thanks to Frances Cathryn for making it happen (!!) and for writing such a generous piece.

Ghost in the Throat at Filter Space

Looking forward to Spring 2023 when I will have the opportunity to share my solo exhibition, Ghost in the Throat, with Filter Space Gallery in Chicago! I am grateful to the gallery team as well as the 2021 Exhibition Advisory Committee:

Emanuel Aguilar—Founder, PATRON Gallery

Gregory Harris—Donald and Marilyn Keough Curator of Photography, High Museum of Art Atlanta

Karen Irvine—Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago

Sasha Phyars-Burgess—Former Filter Space Exhibiting Artist

2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial

I am thrilled to partner with 062 Gallery on a series of interactive public artworks hosted by the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Follow along on @plinthsforthepeople

Chicago Reader Reviews We forget the moon while holding up the sun

Celebrated arts writer Claire Voon recently reviewed my solo show at 062 Gallery for the Chicago Reader! Check it out in print at news stands city-wide and online.

We forgot the moon while holding up the sun at 062

My solo show opens at 062 Gallery on 28 May 2021 and features all new works. Building from past contested public monument work, this show focuses on white women’s role in the construction and maintenance of white supremacy. Monuments and decorative neoclassical objects found in private and domestic spaces are interrogated in these new photo and installation works.

Art Papers Feature

NewCity feature

A great shout out in New City Magazine this week thanks to Arts Editor, Kerry Cardoza!

PracticexPractice

The inaugural edition of PxP is available for order now (EDIT: SOLD OUT!) and features the work of Stephanie Dowda DeMer, Kelly Kristin Jones, Leticia Huckaby, Tarrah Krajnak and Rachel Cox.

in time and paradise at RAC

My new, site-specific installation is up at the Riverside Arts Center through the end of November 2020. As part of the show I will be performing with each dodging tool at contested monument sites throughout the Chicagoland region. View performance documentation here.

New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA)

I’m thrilled to exhibit two pieces with 062 for NADA Chicago 2020. Check out the show here.

On Building and Rebuilding

A solo exhibition at Wheaton College 26 August - 17 September 2020 featuring my contested monument work and a new sculpture to be installed on site.

Feature in Burnaway

“Jones’s works propose a strange sort of maternal care: tucking the monument into sleep, into oblivion, into its deathbed under a blanket of printed pixels.”

Thank you, Erin Jane Nelson!

Annoucement: The End of History at McEachern Art Center

Tracing Faults Reviewed by NewCity

“… Jones reimagines history by erasing these monuments, with her dodging tool leaving nothing but a white shape, a blank slate that offers room for potential change and possibility.”

Many thanks to Christina Nafziger for NewCity Art!

Five Works at MANA Contemporary

New work at MANA Contemporary goes up today as part of their Five Works program. Join me opening night on Friday, November 15, 2019 from 6p - 8p… I’ll be the VERY pregnant person :)

Animal Tactics at GOLDFINCH Gallery

Guest curated by Jordan Martins, Animal Tactics brings together works by Devin Balara, David Heo, Kelly Kristin Jones and João Oliveira, whose sculptures, paintings, and photographs ponder animal behavior as a means of understanding perceptual relationships embedded within landscapes, human activities, territorial marking, and visual structure. Through a variety of media and approaches, the artists in this show point to the ways in which humans are themselves animals, animals are seen as objects, and objects themselves can manifest an animal-like agency.

GOLDFINCH gallery is located at 319 N. Albany, Chicago, IL 60612

9/15/19 – 10/26-19

The Shape of a Whisper and its Echo at the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation

The Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation in partnership with the Chicago Artists Coalition are proud to present the eighth exhibition of their joint Curatorial Fellowship program, The Shape of a Whisper and its Echo curated by Greg Ruffing with works by Kevin Demery, Liz Ensz, Ashley Freeby, Daniel Hojnacki, Kelly Kristin Jones, Sam Kirk, Frances Lightbound, SaraNoa Mark, and Tamara Becerra Valdez.

July 2019 Artist in Residence at LATITUDE

I will be spending my days at LATITUDE this summer! LATITUDE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Chicago and maintains a community digital lab with high-end scanning and printing equipment. As an AIR, I will have no-cost, 24-hours access to amazing resources. In addition to the opportunity to work on scanners and printers, LATITUDE has arranged for MOAB paper to sponsor all of my printed work! That means free paper! Many thanks to LAT and looking forward to seeing what happens this month.

Check them out - they’re open to the public and offer amazing workshops and programming all year: https://www.latitudechicago.org/

Thrown Stone, Spitten Image at Chicago Artists Coalition

Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to present Thrown Stone, Spitten Image, an exhibition featuring new works by HATCH artists-in-residence, Mark Blanchard, Cassandra Davis, kwabena foli, and Kelly Kristin Jones. The exhibition runs from July 5 - August 15, 2019, with a reception on Friday, July 19, from 5-8 pm.

Through digitally manipulated photographs, on-site interventions, sculpture, and performance, Kelly Kristin Jones reclaims public spaces from those state-sanctioned monuments that masquerade as art while concealing oppression and abuses of power. Her sculptural intervention allows visions of place to stand without threat. Each photographic effort carries the scars, seams and digital residue of efforts to remove, reinterpret, and restore both landscape and narrative.

Thrown Stone, Spitten Image is curated by Jeff Robinson.

Composites: Sites for Social Justice at UIC

Artists, Scientists, and Creatives: Nancy Sánchez Tamayo, Santiago X, Kelly Kristin Jones, Andrew George, Meg Malone, Chloe Nash, Swamp Dead: Ben Taylor with Sandy Guttman, and Todd Garon
Curated by Rachel McDermott
5th floor at the Art and Exhibition Hall at UIC at 400 S. Peoria St.

"Composites: An active return to sites for future justice" brings together a group of artist, scientists, and creatives whose work directs contemporary societal questions about our vernacular every day back to their original sites to examine what is there, what is happening, and what we’re missing. With practices in land management and healing in public space, their studies of the sites themselves identify patterns, draw attention to oppressed histories, and develop new methodologies in order to push for more equitable futures. With purposes and intentions that exist outside the gallery, the works and projects bring practices of action and presence inside an educational institutional exhibition space. The title Composites: An active return to sites for future looks at the projects and artworks as composites, with many complexities and parts through observation, engagement, and forward motion that gather together to move collaboratively forward to make change. “

2020 Luminarts Cultural Foundation Project Grant

I have been been awarded a 2020 Luminarts Cultural Foundation Project Grant award for the large-scale production of my “Performative Landscape” project to be exhibited Fall 2019!

Anarchival Impulse at ACRE Projects (Chicago, IL)

A site-specific installation of “Wish You Were Here,” my ongoing healed postcard project is on view in Anarchival Impulse at ACRE projects in Chicago through 30 March. This installation features 300 inkjet prints of digitally altered historic postcards featuring contested historic sites. The exhibition also features work by Jen Everett (pictured above), Lovie Olivia, Wen Liu and is curated by Stephanie Koch.

Several works from my contested histories series, including Founding Fathers (above), are featured in Anarchival Impulse, an exhibition curated by Stephanie Koch. The show opens Friday, March 1 at ACRE Projects in Chicago and will be on view through the end of the month.

Maiiam Contemporary Art Museum in Thailand

“The Way She Put On Her Shoes” (above) has been added to the permanent collection at Maiiam Contemporary Art Museum in Thailand.

Art of the Neighborhood at Willis Tower (Chicago, IL)

Gray Space (image above) has been included in an inaugural exhibition at Willis Tower and is part of the new Art of the Neighborhood program introduced by Chicago Artist Coalition and CNL Projects. The show is open to the public through May 2019.

The Art of Being Dangerous at Hyde Park Art Center

Installation of Pez Heads (above) is included in the “The Art of Being Dangerous” curated by Erin Toale and currently on view at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, IL (through 31 October 2018).

Feature on “Don’t Take Pictures”

My Healing Tool work is reviewed by Frances Jakubek of Bruce Silverstein Gallery and featured on “Don’t Take Pictures”.

#wip

New “Reconstruction” piece (above) completed as part of my 2018 ACRE Residency in Northern Wisconsin. Learn more about ACRE here.

Current Exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, IL. Read more about the exhibition here.

Installation of “Healed” historical monument postcards in South Carolina. Historic postcards that feature contested monuments are scanned, “healed,” and then reprinted.

Sandler Hudson Gallery (Atlanta, GA)

Counter Memorial collage work (above) is currently installed at Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta, GA.