Kiah Celeste (b.1994, Brooklyn, NY) is a multi-dimensional artist whose work has transcended fitting into one category or medium. Living a peripatetic life since leaving her native Brooklyn, Celeste moved from her university background in photography into three-dimensional production. Kiah has spent her time completing artist residencies in Barcelona, Vienna, and Frankfort (KY), as well as solo exhibitions in Chicago, Lisbon, New York and Louisville. Her work has recently been acquired by the Speed Art Museum, KMAC Museum, and University of Kentucky Art Museum. Constantly gleaning objects from urban and industrial environments, Kiah Celeste forages for materials that speak to her. Using almost exclusively discarded or secondhand items, she creates something new and fortuitous from decay. Although these works are often made with synthetic materials, they allude to the organic and the surreal. By adhering to rigorous principles of sustainability and low intervention, she challenges physics, with compositions that carefully balance through tension, weight, flexibility, and gravity. These texturally rich compositions highlight the inherent beauty of the objects, while retiring their original function. With a multifarious identity as a Black and Jewish woman, both feminine and androgynous, and introverted and social, among other contrasting in betweens, her sense of un-belonging finds respite in the embrace of disparate materials, creating a cohesive whole, finding freedom in self, the world, and creative practice. Kiah Celeste currently lives and works in Louisville, KY. She is jointly represented by DOCUMENT and Swivel Gallery.
