Kelli Connell
Double Life, 20 Years
July 9 - 30, 2022
Blue Sky is pleased to announce Double Life, 20 Years, an exhibition of photographs by Kelli Connell.
The large-scale, color photographs in Double Life appear to document the lives of two women in a relationship, when actually these images are digitally created montages of the same model, Kiba Jacobson, seen doubled as she plays both characters in each scenario. Using the computer as a tool to create a believable situation is not that different from accepting any photograph as an object of truth, or by creating a story about two people seen laughing or quarreling in a restaurant. This work is an honest representation of the fluidity of the self in regards to decisions about intimate relationships, sexuality, gender, family, belief systems and lifestyle options.
The project’s multi-year span opens up new dialogues about women and aging and explores polarities of identity such as the masculine and feminine psyche, the irrational and rational self, and the motivated and resigned. By combining multiple images of the same model in each image, the dualities of the self are defined through body language and clothing worn. The importance of these images lies in the representation of interior dilemmas portrayed as an external object: a photograph. Through these images, viewers are presented with constructed realities that reveal complicated truths.
In-Person Conversations with Kelli Connell, Nancy Floyd & Natalie Krick, Saturday, July 23
Kelli Connell (American, b. 1974) is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer / sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications of her work include PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture), and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and The Center for Creative Photography. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at PLAYA, Peaked Hill Trust, LATITUDE, and Light Work. Kelli Connell lives in Chicago where she teaches at Columbia College Chicago.