In works produced in recent years, Karen Kraven explores the body, focusing on its instability and shifting limitations. Challenging ideas of physicality, her sculptures incorporate fabrics charged with connotations, which, through fragmentation or abstraction, set forth a reverse reading of their functionality. Kraven\u2019s works debunk corporeal materiality by questioning individuality and collective cohesion put simultaneously at the service of productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recurrent motifs in Kraven\u2019s work, costume and uniform serve as vectors for community, with allusion to diverse communities related to sports or the clothing industry. Gymnastics, a thread in several projects, is a discipline through which Kraven examines, among other subjects, conceptions of team and nation. Through the leotard, the tight-fitting costume worn in dance and gymnastics that often bears the colours of a school, team, or nation, depending on the context, Kraven addresses the notion of competition and the belief in borders \u2014 political, but also social and identity-oriented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silver Jacket Arabian<\/em> and Red Winged Double Back<\/em>are two gigantic shiny coloured leotards suspended on long sinuous rods. Their titles make reference to specific moves within gymnastics and to bird plumage. The leotards evoke the physical gestures of sporting performance but also clich\u00e9s of how women, depicted as flying creatures, part human, part animal (including the bird, butterfly, and fairy), are reduced to symbols of fragility, adornment, and lightness. The oversized aspect of the costumes transforms them into monuments celebrating the power of the body while highlighting the conditions under which incredible feats of strength take shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The installation Flip Flop, Punch Front<\/em> comprises a series of leotards stretched into three-dimensional silhouettes. The title draws its inspiration from acrobatics, in which movement and immobility are codependent. The works evoke bodies that vault, glide, twist, bend, flip, and flop. As truncated anatomies \u2014 some without legs, others without arms \u2014 that question the notion of completeness, the isolated gestures and clothing perform together to resist a conception of the body envisaged as an autonomous and closed system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n