ARTIST STATEMENT
Cellular Memories of Roe v Wade: This Space is Mine” depicts my imaginary and symbolic view of my uterus from the inside — it is full of scars and several sets of old stitches, showing layers of experiences once raw, red, and bleeding, hemorrahging, now patched together after various multiple surgeries and procedures. It is surrounded by a pink-and-gold chain of protective healing light. It is a direct visceral reaction to the overturning of Roe v Wade by the current Supreme Court. It is a statement of fear, sadness, anger, and despair as I contemplate the loss of a basic women’s right to reproductive care and reproductive freedom. It is also a simple but dramatic, empowered, resilient, and forceful visual statement that this space, this uterus, is MINE no matter what is thought, said, believed or legislated by others and that I — and no one else — will be the one to make decisions about it.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kendra Kett’s mixed media art depicts the power of healing and recovery after loss, betrayal, abuse, and grief. “Using abstraction and color theory, my art attempts to visually communicate that healing is available to us every day — in the mundane, in symbols we see around us, and in everyday colors. Healing begins and occurs in our very molecules & cells. We slowly evolve, we slowly heal…breath by breath, day by day, one cell at a time. The shapes in my art are my imaginative visual ideas of what our cells, molecules, and their interactions look like as we encounter the hard work of healing while we simultaneously enter new states of renewal and aliveness that place us on a now different path. My art is also about experiencing conflicting emotions, sometimes within a single moment — this is a concept our culture-at-large wants us to reject. Many pieces address the co-existence within us of sadness & happiness, anger & compassion, despair & accomplishment, love & loneliness.”
Kendra is self-taught as an artist and has been drawing, writing, and making things since she was two-years-old. She is the author and illustrator of a women’s self-help book. She has been an avid art collector for more than three decades and has extensively visited museums, galleries, sculpture installations, and architecture across the United States and Europe.
Kendra has been working in the art industry for five years and owns the Blue Moon Gallery, located in Grayslake IL, where she has an established reputation for excellence, professionalism, service, and innovation.
© Kendra Kett