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My practice springs from my fascination with the text+image relationship and the simultaneously freeing, limiting, inescapable gaps in language. Humans must approach language as a closed system in order to achieve effective communication, but language has been and will always be an open system through which semiotics, context, and the subjective cause language to – however minorly or dramatically – shapeshift.
Since the advent of computer-mediated communication, today's globalized expansion + contraction of language (think of Google Translate's accessibility and fallibility or the daily misinterpretations of text messages) posits a new iteration of an old set of issues: i.e., miscommunication, authorship, ownership; society’s inundation of text+image and text-as-image is fruitful ground for the restructuring of systems of power. Considering the latter, and our current political climate, I often use words spoken to me by men as my materials, defining materiality as separate from physicality. Intersectional feminist values propel my work, as well as attempts at challenging the sweeping notion of an American psyche which strictly values that which is fiscally or numerically quantifiable – a problem that began in racist, capitalist, patriarchal “ideals” and continues across many channels in different forms. As an LGBTQ+ American woman, decoding power structures which underlie language use is dire – because few things are as powerful and political as language. |
Bio:
Dawn Kramlich is a Texas-born artist and writer who lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. Kramlich earned her BA degree from Muhlenberg College, producing the first cross-major creative honors thesis (paintings + poems) in the history of Muhlenberg’s English and Art departments. While at Muhlenberg, she became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa National Honors Society and graduated magna cum laude with honors. She then moved to Philadelphia and received her MFA in Studio Art from Moore College of Art & Design. Kramlich has shown her work widely in the US and internationally in Ireland. Most notably, her work was included in Maus Contemporary's Capitolism: The Normalization of Political Violence in the United States exhibition in 2021, Rowan University Gallery's exhibition entitled Dialogic alongside John Giorno, Jaume Plensa, Jenny Holzer, and Glenn Ligon in 2013, in the 4-person installation-based exhibition entitled PaperScapes at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 2017, and in the 3-person exhibition titled Beyond the Screen at the Main Line Art Center in 2018. Her artwork has been published in "Muhlenberg Magazine," "CODAmagazine," "THE magazine," and the online version of "Creative Quarterly."
All Images and Text © copyright Dawn Kramlich (unless otherwise noted)
