Krista Franklin
It is our great pleasure to introduce the work of Krista Franklin. As a visual artist, poet, and performer, she uses these artistic disciplines as an expression to birth ideas, make connections, illuminate raw realities, and illustrate a boundless dream space for our futures.
At the heart of her practice, Krista Franklin centers Pan African histories, Black Surrealism, Black culture, Afrofuturism, pop culture, art history, and the raw, complex histories of black people and people of color. She also draws from a place of love, wonder, vulnerability, and beauty. In her visual artwork, she often makes her paper rich in texture, quality, and color. This media is her foundation for constructing innovative visual portals to experience expansive storytelling and world-shaping horizons.
Headshot by zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o'neal
“I produce art in bursts, and I write when I have something that I need to work out or think through with language. The idea determines the form it takes. Sometimes an idea wants to be a cyanotype; sometimes, it wants to be cut up and reassembled; sometimes, it wants to be a poem, a painting, or a performance. Sometimes it doesn’t want to be anything, just an idea. My role is to listen and pay attention. Sometimes I don’t write or make art for what feels like long periods of time, and I don’t trip on that. That artistic silence is a part of the creative process to me, too.”
If you are interested in delving further into Franklin’s work, we highly recommend Too Much Midnight, which is a brilliant collection of thirty poems and collages all by Franklin married into one book. We are honored and thrilled to have her work in our Community Art Collection and invite you to read our interview with her.
Krista Franklin is a writer, performer, and visual artist, the author of Solo(s) (University of Chicago Press, 2022), 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 recipient of the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her visual art has been exhibited at the DePaul Art Museum, 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 several anthologies and artist books.
Artist Q&A
A conversation between Michelle Ruiz and Krista Franklin
Michelle Ruiz: You have an impressive track record in the arts as a writer and visual artist. Which part came first, and when did you realize that both writing & visual art were equally essential to your practice?
Krista Franklin: Art and writing have always existed simultaneously for me from the time I was a child. My writing practice was public for many years before my art practice; however, I was doing both. Art was just my private practice for years until I moved to Chicago. It was the poets in my life who encouraged me to begin exhibiting and sharing my visual practice with the public. Before then, it was something that I did when I had writer's block. It was never meant to be in the world, but here we are.
MR: When I meditate on your collage work, the words that come to mind include: love, magic, light, daydream, black beauty, boundless, community, presence, and joy. What do you wish to invoke when others experience your work?
KF: I see my writing and art practice as something that I do to work out ideas and concepts that are preoccupying my imagination. When I set them free in the world, I don’t have an intention for what I want people to think and feel when they encounter them. I see what I make as having their own lives. Once I release them, what people think about or get from them really has nothing to do with me. I love that when you look at the collages, these words and concepts spring forth inside of you. This is the power of art, that it has the capacity to incite ideas or emotions or connections inside the minds of others, regardless of what the artist intended. I am grateful that my work contains within it the power to make connections with its audience, but that’s not something that I focus on.
MR: What is your process for sourcing materials for your collages?
KF: I have a large collection of printed matter that I love that I pull images from. The process is one of romance, nostalgia, humor, sensuality, and intuition. I might even call it random in some cases. I follow what my eye and mind are fixated on at that moment. What is around that catches my attention, what brings me delight or disturbs me, this is the process. I source what I love.
MR: What current projects or bodies of work are you excited about or working on?
KF: I don’t have a current project or body of work that I’m excited about or working on currently. I’m in a period of stillness around producing work at this time, which is a big part of my making process. I’m an artist who believes that I am an artist and writer who doesn’t need to be in production mode every moment and every year of my life. There should be times when one is just living, breathing, connecting with loved ones, connecting with self. When the next idea emerges, then I will be there to receive it. Right now, I’m excited about being still, healing, and recovering.
MR: We are excited to feature a framed print titled, We Wear the Mask VIII, collage on handmade paper, 2014. This image is striking and incredibly captivating. Can you tell us more about this piece and what inspired it?
KF: We Wear the Mask VIII is one of a series of works that I created in 2014 while in an artist residency at Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago. I was interested in developing a body of work that confronted society's ideas about women being tricky, monstrous, duplicitous, and dangerous beings, paranoid notions that women use their sexuality as weapons. I also wanted to play with surrealist ideas around masks and masking. I set out to create a series of visually formidable and seductive characters who embodied those ideas and traits. Number VIII (8) in the series took a slight turn, however. Unintentionally, that work leans more into troubling historical imagery lying dormant in my subconscious. I think it was an exercise in turning that imagery on its head as an act of empowerment.
MR: Congratulations on your recent commission for O’Hare Terminal 5, curated by Ionit Bahar & Andrew Schachman in partnership with DCASE & Chicago Department of Aviation. While this major acquisition has not been unveiled just yet, would you like to share the themes you have illuminated in this piece?
Thank you! “Wherever You Go There You Are” is a large format print on dibond (aluminum) of a large-scale painting with collage elements. I created the work by thinking through historical Chicago photographs of children at play. I want the work to consider the children who may be traveling through the Terminal 5 corridor. I wanted them to see themselves, joyful, reflected back. Awe, surprise, delight, and magic were themes that fueled the creation of that work.
MR: It is with great anticipation to see the Octavia E. Butler tarot deck debut in the world! You had an essential role as Art Director and collaborated with several talented artists to create this deck, all drawing from Octiavia’s teachings. This feels like a very sacred project. Can you share one of Octavia's seeds of wisdom that has moved you? For those looking to learn more about this deck, we welcome you to watch an artist talk between adrienne maree brown and Krista Franklin hosted by the DePaul Art Museum.
KF: Well, the deck's title has evolved, so it is no longer The Octavia E. Butler Tarot Deck. It is now titled the Lineages of Change Tarot Deck and has grown to encompass ideas that expand beyond just Ms. Butler’s ideas and offerings about change that she left for us in her brilliant writings. It’s become much more expansive, and we are excited about how it’s grown.
However, there are many things in Ms. Butler’s novels and teachings that have moved me throughout my years of loving and studying her work. One thing that I always talk about that she taught me through her characters is “Adapt or die.” If it sounds intense, that’s because it is. Once we refuse to adapt and pivot to new circumstances, ideas, and situations that life presents to us, we are signing up for extinction. Another idea that I return to over and over that I learned from Ms. Butler’s writing is “The only lasting truth is change.”
MR: Are there any mentors or favorite artists that have inspired your work?
KF: So many. My entire practice is one of reference and conversations with writers and artists who preceded me. It’s about homage and pointing to the past, and bringing the past into the present/future. A few who surface repeatedly are Toni Morrison, Hannah Höch, Octavia E. Butler, William S. Burroughs, Romare Bearden, and Lucille Clifton.
MR: Do you have any upcoming events that we should bookmark?
KF: My exhibition Solo(s): Krista Franklin (curated by Ionit Behar) is now traveling and will open at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College at the end of July 2023. There are also group exhibitions where my work will appear in Chicago and Kentucky that are opening in July and October of 2023, respectively.
MR: Do you accept commissions within your multifaceted art practice?
KF: I accept commissions but very selectively at this point in my career. The project and situation have to be right.