BIO AND ARTIST STATEMENT

Kelley Finley is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily works in sculpture, textiles, and performance. Finley received her BFA in Sculpture at Kutztown University and her graduate degree at California College of Arts '24. She is a visual artist whose work explores personal identity as a biracial woman and formal aesthetics that investigate the relationship between fragility and solidity. Her work has been shown internationally in Hong Kong and Italy, and she is currently an Artist in Residence at Recology, SF.

Through labor, talismans, rituals, and locations, I examine and document the experiences of Asian-mixed identity. When the narrative of female Asian personhood is shaped by artificiality and mixed personhood is influenced by external pressures to fragment identity, it raises the question of what defines existence. Underlying these diverse experiences is a common thread of invisibility, as these perspectives are often rendered unseen.

These diasporic experiences are venerated and tenderly held within the sculptural, anthropomorphic containers I make, creating a sacred space. By utilizing my body in often performative acts of holding these structures during fabrication, they become archives of
ephemeral and private performance, reminiscent of my body or family members in various physical positions– arms outstretched, two bodies standing beside one another, or raising arms in surrender. My work uses scale and embodiment to question the internal versus external view of marginalized feminine existence.

Domestic materials like fabric, thread, and medicinal herbs actualize protection, grief, monumentalization, and personal shrines. Pairing these with construction materials like concrete, fluorescents, and steel creates a visual language that protects and speaks to the Asian diasporic experience. These juxtapositions between the handmade, soft, personal symbolic objects and the industrial materials have the power to articulate narratives of immigration, Asian-biracial identity, and familial heritage.