Kiel Posner
Artist Statement
Working in ceramics and photography, I create installations and objects that function as mindful spaces where I can temper thoughts that weigh heavily on me. My work engages themes of inherited history, memory, and personal psychology.
After graduating, I learned that my family had worked with ceramics within a Bakelite plastics factory in New York City’s Garment District. Since uncovering this history, I have integrated remaining materials from the factory (primarily ceramic overglaze decals) into my practice. I began working in porcelain to echo the processes my grandfather and his father once used, as a way to hold their memory in the process of my work. This re-performance of their labor is approximate; the divergences in form and context allow me to refract their lived experiences in my own queered way.
I surface Fabric-like porcelain forms with custom ceramic photographic transfers; these objects sit between object and photograph, becoming sites where image and form allow me to reconcile the past with my present experience. I am deeply burdened by the nonphysical things passed onto me. Some of the most challenging aspects of my own psychology are artifacts of other people’s lived experiences. To some degree, we all absorb the trauma and memories of those around us. At their best, relationships bolster my sense of self; at their worst, they leave me carrying experiences not endemic to my own life.
In my work, I consider this residue of memory as a physical inheritance, something to be cared for, a tether to the past, and something that takes up space. My practice asks where the memory shared with me from others ends, and where my own begins.
Bio
Kiel(Kyle) Posner is a ceramist born in Washington, DC. Kiel received a degree in Craft and Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020. Kiel also received a fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts while working in Richmond.
They also completed multiple artist residencies, notably at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA. They have since developed a teaching practice as a ceramics instructor for various studios and institutions in the DMV area, including Material Things Studio, the Arlington Museum of Fine Arts, The District Clay Center, and VisArts of Rockville, Maryland. Before leaving Washington, DC, for Phoenix, Kiel worked as the ceramic studio manager for the GW Corcoran School of the Arts.
They started working with clay at 14, and that passion steadily grew into an obsession that Kiel happily indulges to this day. Kiel explores themes of queerness, spirituality, and personal psychology in their work, primarily working in installation using porcelain and ceramic photography transfers.