Exhibitions

STACY KRANITZ: AS IT WAS GIVE(N) TO ME (2009-2022)

Institute of Contemporary Art (UTC) / 752 Vine St. January 17, 2023 - March 12, 2023

Stacy Kranitz

The Stacy Kranitz artist talk will be on Feb. 16th at 6pm, in the Card Family Auditorium, EMCS Engineering Building, Room 201. Reception follows until 8pm at the ICA Galleries.

The Institute of Contemporary Art Chattanooga, as participating in the inaugural 2023 TN Triennial under the theme RE-PAIR, presents the complete opus of Stacy Kranitz’s body of work As it was Give(n) to Me (2009-2022): an expanded artist-based archive of photographs, collected images, text, and sculptural objects that traces exploration and extraction in central Appalachia over the past decade. These documents reflect on our relationship to representations of reality and the inherent flaws and ruptures in constructed notions of truth.

Working within the documentary tradition, Kranitz makes photographs that acknowledge the limits of photographic representation. Her images do not tell the “truth” but are honest about their inherent shortcomings, and thus reclaim these failures (exoticism, ambiguity, fetishization) as sympathetic equivalents in order to more forcefully convey the complexity and instability of the lives, places, and moments they depict. Poised between notions of what is right and what is wrong, she uses photography to open up narratives that confront our understanding of culture, especially focused in the Appalachian region of the American southeast.

Kranitz’s exhibition will feature images from all four sections of her artist archive, as well as a special artist study room that highlights research materials and sculptures that accompany the series. The study room will be a key conduit to connect to the academic course that accompanies the exhibition and conversations around RE-PAIR.

Image: Stacy Kranitz, "Wytheville, Virginia", 40x26.5 inches, unframed wallpaper