Traci Kelly: Born 1961 Nottingham, England.        Lives & works: Schwarzwald & Stuttgart, Germany.                                                                                                                          STATEMENT

Entangled Subjectivity

Intelligent, provokative, almost disturbing - you created a space that I will never forget. Sigurd Sandmo Direktør for Komponisthjemmene I KODE, Bergen

A curiosity about my cultural subjectivity, social relations and material possibilities drives my approach to making. I use diverse materials and their histories to give flesh to personal and philosophical aspects of performance and object works.

I consider the body as a source of material and cultural production and a physical site of presentation and annunciation. Skin, touch, unstable substances, visual utterances from the body have always and continue to permeate my experimental approach to making. Work is latently framed by chronic skin conditions experienced at different stages of life, childhood abandonment and earliest memories of hospitalisation and separation. A deep absence, sense of unknowing and searching surface through works that disappear over time, transform, contaminate or suspend at ‘laboratory’ stage.

The materials I select hold their own quiet yet strong voice —rippling and vibrating with complex histories and embedded knowledges amplified by their new found un/forms. I give attention to bodily matters across species, with bee-collected pollen and honey indicative of female labour, collective action and non-verbal forms of communication such as chewing and movement.  

Recently oysters living tidal she-he lives, filtering the world through their bodies, engendered to the shifting environment, have begun to shape thinking and making. Works are caught between wandering and anchoring, dislodging and coalescing. Whilst bees model democracy, oysters dissolve boundaries. Both of these positions are vital to me as I navigate my political subjectivity.

Works are made for white cubes, historical buildings, landscapes and museums. They have inhabited transitional spaces such as corridors and stairways in the overlooked folds of architecture such as thresholds, handrails, elevators and meeting points. They have nestled amongst Roman artefacts and been raised upon altars. They have been urgent and visceral, spectacular and barely there. 

BIOGRAPHY

I want to tell you what you should know

Born in a slum close to Nottingham railway station, I grew up surrounded by the scent of spices, steel bands playing on the street corner and reggae blasting out of windows. At primary school, I was awarded a prize for imaginative story writing, a waist apron with pocket chosen by Mr Smith’s wife. I also won an art competition for painting a Great Crested Grebe on the River Trent. Later in life, inclinations for imaginative language and creative out workings began to resurface urgently and I progressed as a mature student through art education, finally gaining a doctorate in collaboration and intersubjectivity. The collaborative project hancock & kelly between myself and Richard Hancock has spanned two decades. Critically acclaimed work features in edited titles by Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge and journals including Contemporary Theatre Review and Dance Theatre Journal. Material is held in several publicly accessible archives: Dance4, Nottingham, UK; Live Art Development Agency (Studies Room), London, UK; Die Schwarze Lade European Performance Archive, Documenta Kassel; DE. In 2020 I was awarded the honorary position of International Associate Research Fellow at The Institute of Drama, Dance & Performance Studies of De Montfort University. In 2023 the university acquired the Traci Kelly Archive and the hancock & kelly Archive, where they form part of the teaching and research ecology.

“Click here to download my C.V.”

More works to exhibit and purchase on Artwork Archive https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/traci-kelly/embed

PUBLISHED WRITINGS

ORCID (Connecting research and researchers)

THANK YOU

Artists whose practice and support I am grateful for.

Richard Hancock https://richardhancock.info/#about

Rita Marhaug https://www.ritamarhaug.com/

Laurel Jay Carpenter. https://www.laureljay.com/

Boseda Olawoye https://www.bosedaolawoye.com/

Julia Wenz-Delaminsky https://julia-delaminsky.de/

Eva Schmeckenbecher. https://www.eva-schmeckenbecher.de/

Gabrielle Zimmermann https://www.gabriellezimmermann.de/