Kaitlynn Webster’s sculptural and two-dimensional work initially strikes the viewer with an aesthetic minimalism. Utilizing a subdued palette of whites, creams, grays, and blacks she creates an almost clinical environment for the viewer to enter. Yet within the work there is a tension, marked by the repetitive employment of circular, cylindrical, and linear forms. Delicate nails pierce plaster cylindrical bodies over and over while minuscule circles and intricate linework overwhelm and crowd the surface of her large-scale drawings. Together, these elements seek to map a psyche marked by trauma. The abstraction of the work refuses to create dialogue about the traumatic events and instead speaks to the psychological aftermath. The physicality of the work refers to the the residual ways in which trauma reverberates through the physical body. Here, trauma’s effects may be abstracted in visual form, but they are anything but intangible constructs to only be thought of, rather they invade the viewers space and demand material presence, just as trauma itself permeates through the actual body. Within the work lies an urgent message about the need for a more nuanced conversation surrounding trauma and layered approaches to the care of those individuals in the face of medical practices that still often view and treat the body and mind as separate entities.
Morgan Madison (2018)
www.noreallyimallwrite.com