Artist Statement
Kevin Valentine works across disciplines creating artwork in paint, print, video, performance and installation, incorporating interactivity and participation, webstreaming and community based art. Much of his current work focuses on issues of social justice, specifically humanitarian concerns regarding Iraqi widows.
Trained as a painter and printmaker, Valentine has exhibited art in a variety of media since 1980. In 1991, Operation Desert Storm’s ubiquitous yet sterilized coverage compelled Valentine to respond with a series of etchings, painting, multi-media assemblages and songs.
Valentine’s Widowsweave project—his first project as fiscally sponsored not-for-profit, Artistactivist—highlights the living conditions of the overlooked survivors of Iraq’s thirty years of turmoil. The work is both abstract and specific, memorializing three million widows with lines and intersections of lines. Works in this series include, performances with projected video, an interactive artist’s book with six video streams, public performances with community participation at dozens of area beaches, and a two-room installation with participation of over two hundred participants that included live webstreaming, video documentation, guest performances and a panel discussion on Women Artists in Muslim Society. Widowsweave events and installations have received two grants in the last twelve months. Widowsweave images have been chosen for the cover of the Columbia College Interdisciplinary Art Department’s Thesis Show catalogue, the image for the Weisman Award group show post card, and an advertisement in the 2010 Winter issue of Bomb promoting Columbia College Chicago’s Interdisciplinary program. This year the artist hopes to see the project prove its efficacy and sincerity by supporting Iraqi widows in a substantive way. As he continues to work on his Widowsweave project, new projects are being conceived both as himself and as Artistactivist.
He has a BA in Art and Philosophy from Principia College, an MEd from Loyola University in Curriculum and Instruction, and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts & Media from Columbia College Chicago.
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