Kaleena Stasiak
Kaleena Stasiak is an interdisciplinary artist who uses an assortment of haptic media to explore collective mythmaking, and its relevance to the present day. Digging through a lexicon of symbols and imagery evoking American colonial times, folk art, and quilts, she reframes the dominant ideologies surrounding early history and domestic labor. Her graphic cyphers denote the power and breadth of traditional women’s work, functional handicraft, and the impulse to create. Decoration and ornamentation become expressions of desire, signifiers of identity, and autobiographical documentation of lives omitted from text-based historical narratives and artistic discourse.
Originally from Ontario, Canada, Stasiak holds a BFA in Printmaking from the Ontario College of Art and Design and an MFA in Printmaking & Book Arts from the University of Georgia. Recent shows include Prevailing Winds at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN,Tournament of Lies at Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY, Ancient Art Objects at Whitespace in Atlanta, GA, and Identity Measures at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, LA. She has taught printmaking workshops at St. Michael’s Printshop in St. John’s, NF, where she was the May 2023 Visiting Artist, and at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts. In 2017 Stasiak founded the South East Women Wrestlers, a performance troupe based in Athens, GA, that uses the spectacle of wrestling to reframe stereotypes and representations of femininity.
