Crystal Nelson
Exhibition & Residency:
July 1 – July 30, 2011

As a research-based artist, Crystal Nelson traces history’s trajectory and locates its impact on contemporary society. While she investigates race, sexuality and class as individual consequences of unresolved history-cum-trauma, Nelson is specifically interested in the cross-sections of these categories. Through confrontational and sometimes absurd photographs, videos, actions and performances she uncovers the often-ignored nuances and complexities of history and identity.

Taboo imagery, language and iconography take center stage in her practice, with materials ranging from found objects to appropriated text, images and video, among other materials. Nelson use these materials and processes to explore methods people use to navigate these politicized spaces as the old sociocultural narratives either shift into obsolescence or reveal themselves to always have been unreliable. Nelson also use these elements to create a level of tension that she can further mine across bodies of work and across forms as she tries to conflate both the relationship between objectification and subjectivity and between myth and truth.