Bedroom Soliloquies 2021

During the pandemic, I invited strangers into my bedroom via zoom for differing meetings, creative expressions, and pursuits. This vital connection with others skipped many of the usual stages of decorum, opening up straight into the interior of my world. The video series, Bedroom Soliloquies, have come out of that time and marked many life transitions: loss, grief, and revelations of the truth. The colors and textures of the home chosen for comfort surround me. Rose color candles burn with golden warmth and illuminate water-filled jars - remnants of my sculptures and spiritual practices. I intersperse the video self-portraits with 360 footage lending a simultaneous sense of distortion and harmony, beauty and apparition. The alteration of the image allows me to play with light, image, and color recapturing the lost joy of my childhood.

Up until this summer, I have always dreaded writing. I am dyslexic, writing has been a chore - difficult and painful. Something, I had little time or interest in doing but would need to support my art practice. Now I realize I am not at war with language, instead I am living the paradox of being an artist who doesn’t like to be seen. I have always shied away from the clarity of language until I began enjoying letting a provocateur part of me out to play in my zoom room writing group. I began breaking open, unearthing truths, vulnerabilities, and passions, releasing pent-up frustrations held for a lifetime of being a good girl fifth-generation Texan.

Soliloquies held in silence for decades
Unleashing righteous rage
Torrents of tales
Shaking the ground
to rebirth

The seed cracking opens up through the dirt, manure, and time of nature.
Vulnerable truths of trauma, patriarchal society, and the role mothers and women are expected to hold.

In brokering a new digital deal I claim the space I inhabit in cyberspace as sacred, whether live or prerecorded. I support truth, sincerity, and vulnerability.

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Reclaiming Self in Nature

KIMBERLEE KOYM-MURTEIRA

Spending time in nature allows me to tap into my resilience. In this sacred space, I attune to the allure of shape, light, and sensation. Using a 360 camera, I document this embodiment practice focused on connecting with the environment by capturing images that convey a sense of enclosure and expansion. The resulting photographs serve as acts of healing, yet also exhibit a fragmented and disembodied quality. In an effort to delve into these intangible states, I utilize these images and processes to convey a simultaneous sense of distortion and harmony, beauty and apparition. In exhibiting this work, I create a series of stills prints on metal or project the moving imagery in installation.

The participants in this project include myself, mothers and members of the queer/non-binary AFAB (Assigned Female at Birth) community. These images capture the experience of integrating oneself with the natural world. Frequently, mothers prioritize the needs of others and may overlook their own self-care. My aim is to reestablish a connection between queers claiming their bodies and nature, free from the constraints of patriarchal and heteronormative frameworks. Concealed beneath this altered depiction of the natural world also lies my profound apprehension for the wellbeing of our environment.

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