About

Artistic Statement

October, 2024

Kelly Jaclynn Andres (she/her) is an artist and curator who lives in Camrose County located on the traditional territory of the Siksikaitsitapi, Tsuut'ina, Stoney Nakoda, Cree, Saulteaux and Métis peoples. Her practice is composed of socially engaged performances and installations that contemplate nature-culture entanglements of anthropocentric, organic and synthetic phenomena.

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My work consists of the design of conceptual systems, performances and interactions that are generative and emergent, thereby enacting modalities of growth or flux creating unstable scenarios. Thematics I work with are elemental, process-based, technical, with an interest in ecological networks, bioremediation, fermentation, and inter-species influences. Many works require collaborative gestures and collide with the public through gentle, tactile, sensorial or tender interventions.

This practice intermingles ecological thinking with daily encounters that include plants, animals, electronic entities, sound waves, photons, chemicals and minerals. I seek to playfully blend artistic concepts and technical processes into a form of alchemical or sensory-based evocation. From the gradual development of an idea, a process or hypothesis emerges and the artifacts of my experiments form multi-medium installations as active residues or lively archives.

I often work with a concept of tender curation where a component of an artwork requires tactile interaction or tending throughout the process of creating and sharing the project. The central intent of my practice is to continually explore and reposition sensory experiences that encourage an expansion into different modalities of thinking, sensing or responding. As thoughtful beings located in a universe that is largely unknown, there is infinite potential for creating new ways of relating to ourselves and the diverse phenomena we share this earth-home with.

Biography

Kelly J. Andres (she/her) is a research-based artist of settler origin. Andres completed a PhD in Humanities (Visual Arts) at Concordia University, Montréal, titled Radicle Assemblages, 2020. Her work intertwines ecological art practices, plant studies, and experiential approaches for sensorial immersions.

Recent exhibitions include The Works Festival, Edmonton, Particle + Wave, Calgary, Les yeux dans l’eau, Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop University in Sherbrooke, Sandstone City, The Lougheed House, Calgary, The Garden of Speculations, articule, Montréal, le Centre des arts actuels Skol, Montréal, La Maison des arts de Laval, Laval. Andres’s past work has been generously supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Andres is studying to become a western herbalist, works as a municipal public art curator, and lives in a cabin on an alkaline lake near Ferintosh, Alberta.
contact: kelly dot andres at gmail dot com