About the Exhibition
On view February – April 2024
Presented in Gallery 3 is a trio of Raeleen Kao’s work illuminating her practice as a printmaker and includes a site-specific installation of Vital Signs, composed of printed etchings, hand-cut paper, and wax.
Raeleen Kao describes her work as an overgrown refuge that reaches out and folds her up within the safety of looming nest-like bodies. These chimeric manifestations were born to ward off the solitude of trauma, to take possession of pain, and demonstrate that the monsters we cultivate can be protectors too. Her work is simultaneously an act of mourning and an analysis of women’s body politics stemming from outdated puritanical literature, mythology, folktales, and buttoned-up Victorian superstitions, which contemporary society obtusely clings to.
Raeleen Kao is an over-caffeinated drawer, printmaker, and paper sculptor residing in Chicago with an endless mission to hug every cat and braid every pie crust. She is a recipient of the Luminarts Cultural Foundation Fellowship in Visual Art, the Illinois Arts Council Agency Grant, and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) Individual Artist Program (IAP) Grant. Her work is represented by Bert Green Fine Art in Chicago and is in the permanent collections of the Kohler Art Museum, the Smith College Museum of Art, the University of Richmond Rare Books & Special Collections, and the North Carolina State University Libraries Special Collections.
