Kai Lemis

Artist Statement

My work is an exploration of divinity, culture, belonging, and their intersection. I combine elements of historical research with feelings of discomfort as I reckon with my own estranged relationship with devotion and heritage. Coiling each row like a prayer, my work is created as a meditation on identity, transformation of faith. I reference religious poses and gestures, but push the forms beyond our realm by introducing characteristics drawn from plants and animals. The figures mutate, fragment, and evolve, becoming strange, metaphysical beings that stand between us and the spiritual realm. I look to create an other-worldly atmosphere where these figures simultaneously become the deity and the devotee. With these explorations, I continue to understand humanity as being both mutably corporeal and introspectively otherworldly.