about

Artist Statement

Bio

So many of my earliest memories were stories. Often not mine in origin, but gifted to me by my first loved ones, who remembered their elders through the repetition of narratives, and hoped I would too. It took years to understand the gift of a story everyone has heard a hundred times or more. The texture of it becomes the knowing glances and rhythm of laughter that peppers the experience. The gift of shared narrative is one that I embrace in both my family of origin and chosen family as the thing that tethers us to each other and our overlapping pasts. My practice is rooted in the veneration of narratives as the truest markers of ancestry and lineage.

My work leans into a Southern Gothicism that is fueled by lives of black queer and trans people throughout time. So many of the stories from my community are buried underneath years of punitive laws and media coverage that sought to banish the LGBTQIA+ community from society. Luckily, despite tremendous danger, there were still queer people who not only lived in their truth, but also documented it so that generations later, people persecuted in similar ways could find proof of their lineage of queer resilience and non-conformity. My research into predominantly Southern American, queer communities of color is the basis for the fantastical narratives I create with my prints and installations. Inspired by Saadiyah Hartman's methodology of critical fabulation, I pull from my lived experiences, the archive, and references to queer-coded media to craft images that breathe life into the cycles we tread that have built spiritual connections to the people who have walked this path before, with, and ahead of us.

I utilize print media, drawing, painting and mixed-media found-object installation to create glimpses into the past that function as mirrors for the present. The ability to replicate prints infinitely and imperfectly functions as both the physical incarnation of retelling a story, as well as a tangible way of ensuring that these portals into history remain accessible to those that inhabit the spirit of the text.

K. Gilbert (they/them) has predominantly spent their life between North Florida, and Georgia. The artist explores how emotional landscapes are shaped and perceptions of history are misinformed by colonized narratives surrounding the past. Growing up black and queer in the South has given them a reverence for the culture and beliefs that enslaved people cultivated and the ability to center black diasporic perspectives in their life and work. Through the use of print media and sculptural installations, they create scenes that speak on feelings of frustration, love, listlessness, and ancestral loss. They have been a recipient of the Six Creative Grant, the Janice Hartwell Award in Printmaking, a 2019 participant in the Humanity in Action Berlin Fellowship, a Mint Leap Year Fellow from 2022-2023, and a South Fulton Arts Partner in 2023, and a 2025 Arts and Social Justice Fellow at Emory University.