Little Rock artist Trinity Kai combines cyanotype photography and cotton fabric to create haunting, thought-provoking, three-dimensional works. She uses her body in many of the pieces and the result, because of cyanotype's vivid blue, has an almost underwater affect. She also incorporates tinted, applied wax to create words in braille on the fabric.
"Shifting in Time" is her first solo show at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Windgate Center of Art + Design. Kai graduated from UALR with a bachelor's of fine arts degree in studio art and last year earned her Master's of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas School of Art.
In her statement about the exhibit, Kai says: "My work analyzes the body as our perspective in the world and as a symbol of absence and presence within public and institutional spaces. I create spaces in my work that reflect my experiences as a person with Albinism, who is classified as an other, and that confront and counter systems of discrimination and stereotypes that we all encounter in different ways."
A few days before "Shifting in Time" opened, we spoke with the 28-year-old artist about working with fabric, albinism and how she uses braille to engage viewers.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
When did you first get interested in art?
It was always an interest growing up, but it really took off in my undergraduate years. I started off as an art education major and with that you take a lot of studio classes. When I took Intro to Photography with [UALR associate professor/photography] Joli Livaudais, I fell in love with photography.
Initially, though, I did not enjoy it. That class was digital photography, and in my work I do a lot of alternative processes and more handmade prints. We did a little bit of that and that's where I fell in love with it, in the darkroom and understanding the science and magic that happens with light. That hooked me and I switched from art education and became a studio art major.
What was it about cyanotype that attracted you?
I learned it as an undergrad and circled back to it in graduate school. What brought me back to it was the blue, there was something about it that worked with the work I was starting to make. There is this beautiful depth that you can get in the blues with cyanotype that makes it unlike other alternative processes.
I started working with fabric to sort of bridge this 2D and three-dimensional space within art and cyanotype takes the fabric in a really unique and beautiful way. You can get so many rich tones. It lends itself to this kind of otherworldy space.
Tell me about this interest in space and trying to define spaces in your work.
In graduate school, I was existing in an institutional space and a very public space like everyone. I have albinism, which is a condition that is genetic and results in a lack of melanin which creates pigment in hair, skin and eyes. I enter any space as that person who has this condition and looks very different. My hair is snow-white pale as is my skin and eyes.
When I enter public spaces there is this kind of presumed accessibility people think they have to ask inappropriate questions when you don't fit the quote-unquote social norm. I get a lot of questions about my physical body at random.
In grad school, I started to talk about my public experiences and kind of created another negotiation. The work became the place where I could put all of that. It became this place where I really started understanding that there is not one space that my experiences and I exist in, it's this kind of liminal, in-between gray space. I wanted to physically create this space that reflected what I felt and what I have to deal with but also become a space where viewers are confronted with that in different ways. Hopefully it creates conversations and understanding and makes people think about how they respond to people who are different.
How does the braille play a role in this?
One of the pieces is "What Would You Say?" The braille explains it and that's where I create a push and pull in accessibility. The whole story is there. You can Google a braille cheat sheet and translate the piece. The viewer can have as much accessibility as they want. You can pull up that sheet, but it means you have to take that time and initiative. Or you can not and just enjoy the patterns.
I wanted to talk about the fabric. It's one thing to make photos using the cyanotype process, but you use fabric to make it more than something printed on paper. The fabric almost seems like a barrier to the figures.
With having albinism, I have to be very conscious of the sun so I'm constantly covered. I wear long sleeves and pants year-round to avoid sunburn. For me, fabric is this interesting protection but obviously a burden in other ways. You can't always wear what you want to wear. There's this duality, it's like a shield and a burden.
The fabric presents the body to the viewer in a direct way, but it's kind of shielded. That's what drew me to working with fabric. And then there's the idea of being able to sculpt it. I have copper wire in some of the pieces that runs through them like thread. It kind of sculpts the fabric and pushes it into this abstraction.
Is "Shifting in Time" a continuation of your earlier series, "In-between Spaces?"
There are pieces from "In-between Spaces" in this, but "Shifting in Time" really is my post-grad school work. For me, coming out of grad school, you have to refigure in some ways who you are. It's about those transitional periods that everyone goes through in their lives.
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None“Shifting in Time” by Trinity Kai
- When: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday through Feb. 25
- Where: Focus Gallery, Windgate Center of Art + Design, University of Arkansas Little Rock, 2801 S. University Ave.
- Admission: Free