Opposites circle around and visually cohere to express how close extremes can be. The resulting worlds are largely beautiful, while slightly chaotic. Words may appear, but are muffled by marks and pudenda. Organics, rendered with great tenderness, are often past their prime. Nothing in these worlds seems rooted or solid; they’re fleeting, uncertain, shifting. Places of absolutes are not found, rather these worlds are built on the ambiguity of chromatic grays – there are no sure or easy answers. Emotion is validated and questions are raised about hierarchies and rankings.
These worlds are recorded in graphite on claybord. The language of flowers merges with verbal and visual language to inspire questions about sex education and our approach to sex as binary. In particular, do we know enough about women’s bodies to control them through legislation? Are patriarchal constructs still conceiving a cultural value of sexual modesty and limiting our understanding of a woman’s right to sexual autonomy? Could my practice be used as a practical tool to influence and communicate – not just as some esoteric, arty thing in a studio?
Biography
The youngest of four siblings raised in sunny Jacksonville, Florida, during the 60s, she remembers the shade of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the light of the women’s rights movement. Her work appears in the permanent collections of the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, NC; the municipal art collections in Raleigh and Rocky Mount, NC; and Fidelity Investments in Raleigh. Farish received the 2014-15 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship, has attended the Jentel Artist Residency in Wyoming, the New York Mills Artist Residency in Minnesota and two Penland Winter Residencies in North Carolina.
Farish has exhibited throughout North Carolina, including the N.C. Museum of Art and Artspace in Raleigh, the Southeastern Contemporary Museum of Art in Winston-Salem, GreenHill in Greensboro and the Greenville Museum of Art in Greenville. Farish received her BS degree in Applied Mathematics from Meredith College in Raleigh and her Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Drawing from ECU in Greenville.
Kiki and her husband live and work in Wake County on her ancestral home, Oakforest. For the past couple of years, they have culled wood piles, outbuildings, attics, and trunks, sorting and preserving generations of possible useful items.
