Elektra KB

Elektra KB is a Colombian immigrant artist. She is an activist for reproductive rights, sexual minorities, and people with disabilities. Her work addresses illness and physical disability, envisioning their utopian possibilities and alternative universes. KB explores topics such as gender, migration, transculturalism, and abuse of power.
Her work combines mutual aid, political action, and communication, often employing a hybrid documentary-science fiction approach. She explores utopia and dystopia in juxtaposition with the real world and a parallel universe through textiles, photography, video, installation, and performance art.
KB uses she/them pronouns. Her work takes place in the Theocratic Republic of Gaia, a utopian/dystopian world currently experiencing "intense geological and social upheaval", where "tensions that have been building for centuries will be released."
Elektra KB lives and works between Berlin and New York.
==Education and early years==
The need for a "safe space" to engage in critical discourse led Elektra to invent Gaia when she was a child. Born in Odessa (at the time part of the Soviet Union, now Ukraine) to a Russian mother and a Colombian father, both of them doctors, she arrived in Boyacá (Colombia) at the age of two. There, she was raised at the rural hospital Santa Marta in Samacá because her father, who had traveled on a scholarship to the Soviet Union to study medicine, chose to work there after completing his rural internship. It was there that she witnessed the escalation of conflict in the rural region of Boyacá.
"Some of us grew up in a perpetual civil war, a dystopia. In this civil war, violence never ceases—even though a minority sequestered away remains immune to its effects. The war transforms but endures. The war we must not speak of, and which we must pretend doesn't even exist, claims the lives of many innocent people who differ or dissent. This renders life disposable and makes hunger and displacement the norm. Living in this dystopian world made me discover that there were many worlds."
Elektra KB studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York (SVA), where she earned her B.F.A. After that, she received an MFA from Hunter College, NY. In 2015, she received a scholarship from the DAAD to study at the Berlin University of the Arts with the artist Hito Steyerl.
==Artistic career==
KB's works are situated at the intersection of reality and imagination, constructing narratives beyond space and time by blending various sources. The artist also employs a range of techniques, from performance art to textiles, photography, video, and installations. Elektra KB creates work that is supported by research related to minorities and diasporas, encompassing individuals with disabilities, the LGBTIQ+ community, and immigrants. Elektra KB's works possess a dual existence, as certain of her fabric pieces, commonly referred to as 'Protest Signs', are exhibited in museums as works of art, while also being utilized in public demonstrations.
KB's work has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, The Guardian, and The New York Times, among others. Some of her recent exhibitions include: 'Think Tank: REPRODUCTIVE AGENTS' at the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE), Italy; 'Who Will Write the History of Tears (Postsecular)' at the Museum of Modern art in Warsaw (2021); 'Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: 50 Years After Stonewall' (2019) at the Brooklyn Museum; 'Abortion is Normal' at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery, NY (2020).
In 2020, KB was chosen as one of the "Women Artists Deserving of Our Attention" by Artsy. Her works can be found in the collections of the Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art in China, the Fondation Salomon, and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
==Exhibitions==
* 2023: Virosis, MAMBO, Bogotá, Colombia
* 2023: Think Tank: REPRODUCTIVE AGENTS, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE), Naples, Italia
* 2023: On Violence, Budapest Gallery, Budapest
* 2021: ‘Who Will Write The History of Tears, Artists on Women’s rights’, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland
* 2022: Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver, Canada
* 2021: ‘Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 years after Stonewall’, Center for Creativity and the Arts, Fresno State, California
* 2021: ‘Living in America’ Curated by Assembly Room, International Print Center, New York, NY
* 2021: ‘When The Body Becomes Manifesto’, Boan 1942 Artspace, Seoul, Korea
* 2020: ‘Catheckpoint.digital’, Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver, Canada
* 2020: ‘Now WTF’, Silicon Valet, U.S. Virtual
* 2020: ‘Currents: An Overwhelming Response’, Curated by Carmen Hermo, [A.I.R Gallery, New York, NY
* 2020: ‘Abortion is Normal’ part I, Eva Presenhuber Gallery, New York, NY
* 2020: ‘Abortion is Normal’ part II, Arsenal Contemporary, New York, NY
* 2019: ‘Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 years after Stonewall’, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY
* 2019: ‘The Politics of Healing: Destroying Silence’, Spring/Break Art Show, New York, NY
* 2019: ‘Territorio Autonomo Cathara y Ciudadan a Global’, Timebag Nutibara, Medellin, Colombia
* 2018: ‘Power is Abuse’, Spring/Break Art Show, New York, NY
* 2018: ‘Radical Women Remix’, a selection of video art by Latinx women from 1960-2018, organized by Brooklyn Museum, curated by Carmen Hermo, at New LatinWave, New York, NY
* 2018: ‘Antisistémicas: Practicas Art sticas desde Otras Fronteras’, Artecamara, Artbo, Bogotá, Colombia
* 2017: ‘Un Regard Sur Le Monde Elektra KB, Gilbert & George, Guerilla Girls et Swoon’, Fondation Art Contemporain Salomon, Annecy, France
* 2017: ‘Screen Present Tense’, Croatian Association of Artists Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
* 2017: ‘Alchemy of the Image’, Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, Turkey
* 2017: ‘Faketopia’, TAV Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
* 2017: ‘Bodies of Water: Body as a Prison/Prison as a Body’, SVA Flatiron Gallery, New York, NY
* 2016: ‘The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless II’, Gaia Gallery, Istanbul* Turkey
* 2016: ‘The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless’, BravinLee Programs, New York, NY
* 2016: ‘Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies: The Animated GIF as Place’, TAV Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
* 2016: ‘Now We Take Manhattan’, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York, NY
* 2016: Contemporary Istanbul, Gaia Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
* 2015: ‘Castle’, Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), China
* 2015: ‘Stories from the End’, UP Gallery, Berlin
* 2013: ‘There are Women at the Gates Seeking a New World’, BravinLee Programs (Project room), New York, NY
* 2013: ‘The Cathara Insurgent Women Vs The Theocratic Republic of Gaia’, Beings, (Project room), Sargen t’s Daughters, New York, NY
Category:People from Odessa
Category:Colombian people
Category:Artists