Moving in closer, The Guardian has arms carved with lines that read like strength, assembled in a confident pose and ready for anything. The Queen gazes right. Her facial features are sharp and pointed, like her hair, like her corset, and like the triangle motif which dots the walls. The Amazon tilts her head up. Her arm is cast over her head, breasts and belly exposed. Her fingers meld with her loose, wavy hair and both oscillate with the same frequency as the pattern on the fabric and walls. The lively fabric lining the walls of the Brooklyn, New York gallery also adorns the figures to create an elaborately crafted optical illusion. Like a Magic Eye autostereogram, the figures pop out of their surroundings—Keilar has perfectly aligned their fabric inlay to merge seamlessly with the pattern on the wall. Overlaying the space with this Memphis-like pattern is a welcomed rejection of the white-walled gallery tradition, a choice that serves the work.
The show strikes a satisfying balance between "art for art’s sake" and social awareness. Her point is clear, but never ceases to be gorgeous or marvelously skillful in its execution. "As a woman, it’s hard to ignore how our bodies affect the way we experience the world,” Kielar explains. “It still feels important to keep pushing our perspective into art because it hasn’t been that long that we’ve been able to do that. A lot of the images we see growing up are by male makers. I’m just trying to establish my own approach to the female form and want my life experiences to find a way into my work." In this way, the artist isn’t too heavy-handed in how she conveys womanhood, or in making a feminist quip. Attentive to the intangible ways that a woman can be limited, her work remains lighthearted and is seriously clever.
The sculpted women Kielar presents for “Shadow Box” are literally boxed-in. They are compressed, bound by individual compartments clearly too small for their stature. Further, the artist has uniformly painted over her ladies, as if to flatten them and reduce them to decorative objects. The Guardian, The Amazon, and The Queen, however, remain awe-inspiring totems to a silent and feminine "soft power." They contort themselves into yogic postures, finding both ease and enunciation from within these constraints. "I think of my work as being portraits of modern women," says Kielar. "They are complex and beautiful but also aware of being looked at through that confining lens."
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The Queen, 2022, Anya Kielar. Photograph courtesy the artist and Pioneer Works. Above: Installation view of "Shadow Box." Photographed by Dan Bradica.
I am a journalist and nonfiction writer based in Brooklyn, NY. I have published arts criticism for Mn Artists, as well as an essay on underground music. In addition to writing, I work as a fact-checker for a magazine company and as a research assistant at Parsons School of Design. I am a graduate student in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism M.A. program at The New School.
In my visual art practice, I focus on analog techniques and mainly work with film and collage. Occasionally I bring this sensibility to the computer for graphic design and text layout. For more, take a look at my portfolio.