Meet Kristen, Twyla Artist
Brooklyn-based Kristen Schiele makes radiant, bold and pattern-driven works that she composes with a cinematic eye. Her pieces initiate from her catalogue of collage material—vintage photography, magazines, found imagery. She manipulates these through a layered process that includes paint, tape, silkscreen and spray paint. In part, Kristen’s works act as portraits; one of her prints is named after a famous 1980s punk drummer, another after Pocahontas. While there may be a glimmer of a figure, her subjects are never literally represented. Instead, the energy and rhythm of Kristen’s work embodies the pulse of the person portrayed.
Meet JiaJia, Art World Digital Strategist
JiaJia is the Director of Digital at the Jewish Museum in New York, an incredibly relevant role for today, as most people consume art on their phones before anywhere else. “I see my role as a translator,” JiaJia says. “Because museums are these places of the past, how do we make sense of technology and make it a tool to activate everything that’s in our institution and make that relevant for the present.” When she’s not working, JiaJia is hitting up to ten new exhibitions each week or sharing her envious global art adventures on social media.
“When I met Kristen, she really embodied her work in the strength of color, structure, depth of knowledge and the references to history and women of the past. I could tell her work was completely an expression of herself.”
JIAJIA FEI
Art Connects Us
Kristen and JiaJia met about a year ago when JiaJia went to Kristen’s studio to film a Periscope video. The two became fast friends, bonding over a common love of cinema and writers like Laura Mulvey. While they live in the same city, their friendship has partially blossomed via Instagram, with JiaJia admiring Kristen’s work and Kristen following JiaJia’s art exploits. Beyond that, the two are connected by a desire to represent themselves in equally creative manners—Kristen through paintings and sculpture and JiaJia through technology and curating. As JiaJia says, “There are so many different ways to capture how women represent themselves, whether it’s writing, painting, or photography. I think what we both do is about finding ways to occupy that space.”
