Krista Franklin is a Chicago-based artist and poet whose work has been published and shown nationally. She is the co-curator of the Chicago citywide poetry and art initiative, EKPHEST: A Festival of Art + Word, and 2nd Sun Salon, a community meeting space for writers, visual and performance artists, musicians and scholars. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts – Book & Paper from Columbia College Chicago. Franklin is the recipient of the Propeller Fund and the Albert P. Weisman Award, and has held residencies at A Studio in the Woods, Cave Canem, and the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life Initiative.
Thursday Sept. 22, 6pm -- works-in-progress artist talk
Krista writes: “My work emerges at the intersection of poetics, popular culture, and the dynamic histories of the African Diaspora. The Fantastic, the surreal, mythmaking, black portraiture, and the collective conscious are conceptual preoccupations of my work. The forms take shape in collage, hand papermaking, installation, poetry, letterpress, altered bookmaking and performance. I appropriate image and text as a political gesture that chisels away at the narratives historically inscribed on women and people of color, and forges imaginative spaces for radical possibilities and visions."
Tues. Sept. 27, 6-8pm -- installation reception "...to take root among the stars." in the PS1 gallery
"...to take root among the stars" is an adjustable paper mural in progress that chronicles evidence of the preoccupation of space travel and mysticism in the black imagination from the 1940s until the present. The mural engages mixed-media on and in paper, vintage magazine articles, quotes, passages from books, and other printed matter that address or allude to what has come to be described as Afrofuturist or Afrosurrealist.
September 28, 2016: Youth workshop, “Scripture from Space” with G! World at South East Junior High School — “Scripture from Space” was a creative writing workshop where students were invited to compose short “scriptures” for themselves and their community. This workshop used science fiction books written by black authors as inspiration for writing. What can we use from the past to make visions and inspirations for ourselves in the future?
Fall 2016 CAS programming is supported by grants from the Iowa Art Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, and the City of Iowa City Public Art Advisory Committee. Thanks also to the University of Iowa Center for the Book and Little Village for their support!