Krista Franklin
(she/her/hers)
2013 - 2014 AIR
(Arts Incubator)
www.kristafranklin.com
Instagram & twitter: @therealkristaf
Krista Franklin is a writer, performer, and visual artist, the author Too Much Midnight (Haymarket Books, 2020), the artist book Under the Knife (Candor Arts, 2018), and the chapbook Study of Love & Black Body (Willow Books, 2012). She is a Helen and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Awardee, and a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her visual art has exhibited at Poetry Foundation, Konsthall C, Rootwork Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago Cultural Center, National Museum of Mexican Art, and the set of 20th Century Fox’s Empire. She has been published in Poetry, Black Camera, The Offing, Vinyl, and a number of anthologies and artist books.
All that Light: Works Detail
7. Under the Knife
Krista Franklin
2018
Artist Book - French-link handbound bookblocks coptic-stitched to clothbound hardcover colophon. Paper wrap cover foil stamped on front and spine. Printed on 5 different papers with Indigo 12000, RISO RZ 390U, and Letterpress.
Curator’s Notes
Visual artist and poet, Krista Franklin deftly combines both aspects of her practice in her extraordinary artist book, Under the Knife. The book's arresting hand stitched red binding suggests sutures and in that way, the book itself serves as both Franklin's testimony and surrogate as she weaves a story that is part memoir, part medical record, and part the collective narrative of all black women who have literally or figuratively grappled with the ways in which identity, agency, and loss are embodied. The white gloves placed next to the vitrine containing Franklin's book are meant to offer a reminder that black women’s bodies and narratives are to be handled with care.