HOME SCHOOL
MAY 13th, 7pm (EST)
ZOOM INFO
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88148080884?pwd=YThUSzA2UjVFSEpaSmZmOHFmUVlLQT09

Join us as we host a dynamic discussion with Artist Mo Kessler. Mo will discuss their recent work exploring the expression and experience of value, and how radical politics offers art and art-makers opportunities to create labor-centered value systems.

ABOUT MO
Mo Kessler (they/them) is a queer Southern anarchist, community organizer and object maker. They received a BFA in Sculpture from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in Studio Arts from Western Carolina University. Mo’s work has been shown throughout central Appalachia and published in print in Dinner Bell and the Rejected Collective, and online in Power Clash and Happy Gallery Chicago. They founded an online artist residency program for visual artists engaged in community organizing and activism online called SiP and the Richmond Studio Project. While at WCU Mo co-founded the LivLab Artist Collective and led the group’s grant writing, securing 6 grants totalling over $38,000 for projects and enhancements to the sculpture department. Currently they serve on the WCU Fine Art Museum’s Collections Committee and the 100 Days in Appalachia Advisory Board.

As a community organizer, Mo worked in struggles opposing mountain-top removal, foreclosures, police brutality, food insecurity and racial injustice. They served as a founding board member of the Renaissance Community Cooperative, the Central Carolina Worker Justice Center, the Youth and Student Coalition for Police Accountability, and as a board member of the Beloved Community Center. Mo has presented on these issues at regional and national conferences as a panelist, keynote speaker and workshop leader.

Mo’s art ranges from object making to multimedia installations. They create forms through repetition, labor, and working-class craft traditions passed down through generations of marginalized communities. Mo is drawn to materials that offer accessibility through familiarity, such as used bed sheets, cement, glitter, plastic gemstones, synthetic yarn and cardboard. Each piece is an investigation of the concepts of “cheap” and “worth”.

Artist Statement
My work is focused on the concept of “cheap” as a lens to investigate value systems and formalism as a tool to reassert, reinvent, and reimagine these systems. Crochet, in particular the rag rug, is at the center of my work. With this stitch, I make connections from where I am, to where I come from and who I come from. From here I question working-class visibility, issues with labor within market-driven contemporary art, and the rationale behind the hierarchical lines drawn in both fine art and craft. Under the politics of disposability and extraction, market-based value is derived from myths of scarcity and exclusivity; to mark value through attention, care and abundance undermines these myths.

The objects I create rely on used domestic materials and the transformation of material through repetitive labor. I am fascinated by the defiance of “tacky”, resilience embedded in the craft that is born of necessity and the system rebellion that occurs when you make for yourself with what you have. My work is as much a meditation on form and labor as it is a by-product of my desire for radical system change.