Gestrata overlays my experience with the physical changes in my body during pregnancy and slow changes that the earth experiences through geological processes. This type of imagining, whether applied to the inner and outer of landscapes or our own bodies, is crucial in imagining the flux of the warming planet. It is about the unknown of the other side and the desire to explore through touch. (i.e. we can only guess at what is inside the earth by measuring the pulses of earthquakes.) In avoidance of gendered and stigma-filled expectations of pregnancy, I directed my questions toward animacy–what it means to be a changing body living on a changing
and shifting planet. Through written and poetic captions I propose that infants aren’t purely innocent blank slates, but that they perhaps hold memory of what it is like to be in constant motion. Capitalistic Western ideals want to mask the world as unbreakable and unmoving. Mechanisms are used to measure-mark-take both the body and planet, but I am drawn to the unmeasurable. Changing and shifting forms delude bounds. Through my own body’s relationship to the geological make-up of the earth, I try to grasp the sounds and feelings of our current moment of unraveling stability.
Artist Bio
Kellie Bornhoft’s (she/her) practice seeks tangible and poetic narratives needed in an ever-warming climate. Bornhoft utilizes sculpture, installation and video to delve into the whelms and quotidian experiences of our precarious times. Scientific data and news headlines do plenty to evince the state of our warming planet, but the abject realities of such facts are hard to possess. Through geological and more-than-human lenses, Bornhoft sifts through shallow dichotomies (such as natural/unnatural, here/ there, or animate/inanimate.) Bornhoft is currently working in the Bay Area of California. She holds a MFA in Sculpture + Expanded Media from Ohio State University and a BFA from Watkins College of Art and Design. Bornhoft’s work has
exhibited internationally in museums, galleries and film festivals such as the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina, Kulturanker in Magdeburg, Germany, and the Athens International Film and Video Festival. Bornhoft’s work has been reviewed in many publications including Frieze Magazine, Burnaway, INDYweek and ArtsATL.