Kimberly Willcox

Traumatic events and hereditary elements play a role in how our identity and body take shape but, are these factors also inescapable: is our parents' history a prophecy of what will also limit us? I am interested in how the economic and societal conditions of previous generations impact both the living and those yet to be born. Through my artistic practice, I confront the difficulties within my own experience in an attempt to find softness and empathy in a family that copes with mental illness. My work brings attention to damaging cycles that come from attempting to ignore or bury trauma.

These cycles come from reliving memories only to be consumed by them, despite how inaccurate memory can be. The setting of a memory is indivisible from the recollection process therefore, as I deal in familial histories, I see the use of domestic space is integral to my practice. In order to maintain family relationships as my subject, I utilize domestic space and light as material, either by paradoxically creating that environment within a gallery or by choosing to respond to a found space. Similarly, I curate these installations and performances with found objects that contain emotional and temporal context. When combined with more traditional sculptural practices, like metal, glass or performance, these elements illustrate inexplicably distorted, yet enduring memories that affect our most complex relationships.

The seen and unseen body as a subject allows me to address these interpersonal relationships. This provides these spaces with a presence and emotional weight. Through my performance work, the seen body becomes a vessel that endures the traumas, both experienced and inherited, through the labor. In other cases, the body is absent, but their trace implies that we hold space for them in our lives, for better or worse. My artistic practice is engaged with finding understanding in challenging relationships that hold this type of complexity. Through the use of space, materiality and body, I transform these habitual ways of dealing with trauma into moments of reflection that can lead to empathy, inherently beginning a new cycle of healing.

Biography
Kim Willcox is an independent, multi-disciplinary artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She pursued her BFA in painting with a minor in art history and chemistry at Tyler School of Art at Temple University. There, her work moved in between the worlds of sculpture, drawing and painting, eventually culminating in her decision to pursue an MFA in Sculpture and Glass at Alfred University.

The subject matter of her MFA Thesis circulates around confronting past trauma, coping mechanisms and finding healing in difficult relationships. After receiving her degree, Kim is interested in continuing her investigations in materiality of light, found objects and the body in her home neon and flameworking studio in Philadelphia.