STATEMENT / BIO
Confrontational and uncanny, my research-based, interdisciplinary work deciphers the machinations of insidious trauma as cultural perpetuations of power hierarchies and even as a defining feature of our current human consciousness. Through experiential and multisensory combinations of time-based technologies, sculpture, and installation, I delve into the trans/formative potential of these abuses and the ways they haunt us, refusing recovery and reconciliation in an anthropocene that values the continuous extraction of resources and labor from life over natural cycles of release and return. I incorporate aspects of neuropsychology, history, and anthropology, medical product descriptions and mythology, as I translate ideas like resuscitation, hysteria, and the apocalypse into physical and temporal spaces, interactions, and objects. Through research, experimentation, and troubleshooting, I combine varied analog and digital mediums and methods into corporeal wholes - hybrid entities capable of resisting expectations of space, time, and body.
My work is monstrous. It is trans-dimensional, unseemly, queer. As with all monsters, it aims to expose what is ‘supposed’ to remain hidden, confronting and disrupting our presumptions, surfacing what’s buried under the weight of capitalist and colonial suppression. Through inter/active discomfort, each piece becomes not just an object of consumption, but a lived experience that turns feeling and affect into a means of social engagement. These experiences refuse to ‘heal’ wounds - instead, they revel in dissonance, discomfort, and disillusion. They call for disruption, as a necessary prerequisite for substantive change. My hope is that these interactions hold validation and catharsis - even as they necessarily shake us.
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KS Brewer was raised in Colorado Springs, CO, and lives in Lenapehoking/ Brooklyn, NY. They received their BA in filmmaking from NYU, and use their training in time-based technologies and their work as a professional fabricator to inform their practice. They’ve exhibited internationally, with recent shows at 601 Artspace, Collar Works, and Peer to Space. Past education programs include Laundromat Project’s Create Change Institute, WhateverSpace’s Coding Interactive Visuals, and Transgressive Medicine’s Sacred Practitioner training. Their work has been published by Forbes, Ravelin, and Hyperallergic. They’ve been an artist in residence at ChaNorth, Laboratory, The School of Making Thinking, and PLAYA (upcoming), participated in Queer Art’s Book & Print fair, spoken at the Queer Form panel at Satellite Art Fair, lectured at the Thessaloniki Queer Art Fair and Field Projects, received the Working Artist Grant, and curated the exhibition ‘STAG: The Illicit Origins of Pornographic Film’ for the Museum of Sex.
