“Even when they are things they fill with bodies. And just as easily bodies break down into things.”

– Andrew Beradini, Mousse Magazine

Kris Lemsalu challenges materiality, personifying and then performing alongside her sculptural works, to reveal a connectivity between object and body. Augmenting reality, at times using her complex sculptures as apparitional vehicles, her ceremoniously strange and captivating performances question the status of the material object.

Kris Lemsalu (Tallinn, 1985) lives and works between New York and Tallinn. She creates mixed-media sculptures, installations and performances with unexpected materials. Lemsalu’s pieces evoke the bestial side of human beings and civilisations, and are often underscored by feminist themes. Lemsalu has shown as part of Performa 17 (2017), DRAF performance night (2017), Bunshitu Gallery, Tokyo (2015), Ferdinand Bauman Gallery, Prague (2015) and is represented by Koppe Astner, Glasgow and Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn. Lemsalu represented Estonia at the 58th Venice Biennale 2019.

In the framework of Protozone11: it’s weird:

Kris Lemsalu will contribute with an untitled durational performance of hers in collaboration with Maria Metsalu and will leave traces of the install until the closing of the Protozone.

Picture: Kris Lemsalu, Paloma (2020). In collaboration with Kyp Malone and Barbara Sanchez-Kane. Performance view at IMMATERIAL Vol. 4, curated by Michelangelo Miccolis at Material Art Fair. Mexico City, 2020. Courtesy the artist and CCA Estonia. Photo: Sandra Blow