Thesis

Collyn Ahrens is a multidisciplinary artist focusing on clay as a material that has memory of time and place. This allows them to revive the process of mourning as spirited and vital. Through a playfulness with the lineage of sculpture and craft, Ahrens can digest the rhythm and labor of living with trauma.

Ahrens work develops an embodied practice in which they are queering craft through slip-casting as a form of feminine reproduction. The series, Mining the Viral (2020) investigates the slippage of digital memory through acts of squashing. The camera forms investigate themes of arresting decay and the desire to see oneself in material. The work, A New Lens, pulls inspiration from EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy to discuss the likeness of failure in both the body and in art practice, in a reparative effort to celebrate the vibrancy of life.