IN FOCUS AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS
Mind, Body and Re-membering Trauma of Past Generations
Sarah Castillo and Baleigh Kuhar discuss collage as a channel for exploring and understanding identity through the impact of historical and intergenerational histories and trauma. Furthermore, how these complicated histories translate into the minds and bodies of today’s society.
From childhood to the beginning of her adult years, Baleigh Kuhar was constantly sick. Her illness was often dismissed due to sexism from medical professionals. As an adult, she learned she had a genetic disorder caused by her great-grandmother’s experience during the Holodomor (or The Ukrainian Famine). “My identity is shaped by this piece of my great-grandmother’s history that has remained unresolved in my DNA.” With the use of collage, we can create experiences to create the re-memory of events from the past to allow empathy and the prevention of future grief. Could collage end human suffering by using images from past events and re-contextualizing them to allow modern society to remember where they came from?
Art, identity, and mental health are central to Sarah Castillo’s work as a interdisciplinary Chicana feminist artist. Living and working in San Antonio, Texas, Castillo looks at the colonized history of racialized ethnic groups living within United States popular imagery. Castillo’s series “Remedies for Re(membering)” are retablo-like collages that embody an emotional connection to what has been lost and found. She uses this series to visually conceptualize lived experiences and their connection to identity formation through the representation of cultural deities of the earth and home. “How does over five hundred years of historical and intergenerational trauma operate against the body? And, how does this translate through art?”
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, July 12-15, 2018. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.
About the Presenters
Interdisciplinary Chicana feminist artist Sarah Castillo is a based in San Antonio, Texas working in mixed media and portraiture. Born and raised in San Antonio, Castillo obtained her Master’s degree in Bicultural Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio with thesis title: Art as an Embodied Practice: Artistic Expression, Conocimiento, and Identity Formation. She is co-founder of Mas Rudas Collective, Creative Director of Lady Base Gallery, and Resident Artist at Clamp Light Studios & Gallery. She has shown at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Artpace, Institute of Texan Cultures, Mexic-Arte Museum, and was selected for the IV Biennial with El Paso Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez in 2015. She was recently awarded a grant from the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture in 2016. Learn more on her Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory page and at www.sarahcastillo210.com.
Baleigh Kuhar is a mixed media artist living and working in Memphis, Tennessee. Her work focuses on themes of identity in relation to the suffering her great-grandmother experienced in The Ukrainian Famine and the effects it has had on the generations after. She paints in bright pinks to scream out her identity as a young millennial woman who proved that her illness exists for a reason, and for the generations of women in her family that have silently suffered. Kuhar has been in shows such as “What Remains” at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada, “12 x 12 Exhibition” in Lawrence, Kansas and the “Bellwether’s Exhibition” at the West Tennessee Regional Art Center in Jackson, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in Paint Pulse Magazine and Identity XX where she was featured in their “Young Talent” section. Learn more about Kuhar and her work at tictail.com/baleighkuhar.
Images (top to bottom):
top left
Anna in Green by Baleigh Kuhar
(9″x6″; acrylic, photo transfers, watercolor and paper; 2018)
top right
from “Remedies for Re(membering)” Series by Sarah Castillo
(36″x24″; C-print; 2016)
A Woman’s Place Is… from “Remedies for Re(membering)” Series by Sarah Castillo
(84″x168″; installation view; 2018)
Fingerprint Gene Sequence by Baleigh Kuhar
(40″x30″; acrylic, photo transfers, and paper; 2018)