ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice engages questions of identity, community, healing, and hope, challenging viewers to consider issues of social justice and human rights. I work in photography, video, sculpture and other media. Growing up in multiple identities as a queer, SWANA, diasporan American, I’m passionate about amplifying diverse voices that inspire change, highlighting the role that women play in the survival and evolution of cultures and communities. My work uses historical motifs, objects, rituals and places to anchor visions of the future in my ancestral culture. My art connects to the ancestral while envisioning and embodying a futurist perspective.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kristin Anahit Cass is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer. Cass’s work imagines the future, touches the past, and envisions a better world. As Hyperallergic noted, Cass’s work “recognizes the lived experience of trauma, yet owns the ability of humans to individually and collectively reframe that experience in their hearts to make way for reparations.” In addition to her arts education, Cass has advocated for social justice in her career as a lawyer. She is a founder of the LGBTQ platform Entanik (Family) actively supporting creatives in the global community.
Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions including Traversing Temporalities at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Reparations of the Heart at the Stamelos Gallery Center University of Michigan, Witness: The Artist’s Response at Elephant Room Gallery, Chicago Neighborhoods at the Hairpin Gallery and SLAYSIAN 2.0 at Co-Prosperity. She is the author of Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity published in 2024 by fifth wheel press. Her Borderlands Under Fire project was a finalist for the 2018 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. Cass is a graduate of the University of Chicago.
© Kristin Anahit Cass