Krista Gay (she/they) is a Los Angeles-born, New York-based artist working across photography, video, text, and installation. Their practice investigates the relationship between Blackness and its viewer, examining how images are produced, circulated and consumed. Working with appropriated imagery including family archives, and digital debris, Gay explores the tension between presence and erasure, recognition and representation, visibility and opacity.
Thinking through the images of Blackness, Gay reinterprets visual materials through the process of layering and re-presentation. Treating video as a form of writing, and images as a dialectical tool, asking the audiences to question what they feel entitled to see and understand.
The installations often position the viewer within the act of looking at itself. Welcoming the audience into spaces where voyeurism is acceptable, Gay simultaneously turns the gaze back on the viewer. The work pauses at this site of encounter, a form of listening, an act of refusal, and an invitation to sit with unresolved questions.
