Kledia Spiro Presents “Drawing in Air: A Multisensory Exploration of Weight and Legacy”
On View from January 5th thru January 28th, 2024. Opening Reception January 5th, 5:00 - 8:00 pm. Performance January 19, 2024, 7pm Artist talk with Joseph Wolin, January 23, 2024, 7pm.
Kledia Spiro’s solo exhibition, Drawing in Air, delves into the fascinating interplay of weight, legacy, and the human experience. Over the last decade, Spiro has embarked on a quest to understand the meaning of "weight" in people's lives.
In 2018, Spiro set out on a journey to explore the concept of weight with middle school students from the prestigious Groton School. During her Mudge Fellowship as Artist-in-Residence at the school, she integrated Olympic weightlifting into their curriculum, teaching them complex athletic movements that extended beyond the gym into their English, Physics, art, and biology classes. Spiro recorded their lifts and transformed the data into signature light drawings, capturing a unique essence of each student's journey. In 2023, Spiro extended her project to students from Boston Public School's Bridge to Calculus program. Their perspectives on weight, shaped by underprivileged backgrounds, provide a compelling contrast to the Groton students' experiences.
Spiro has collaborated with two diverse musicians, Lianna Sylvan and Kevin Baldwin, to translate her light drawings into a captivating music composition. In the gallery, Spiro will physically paint signature light drawings in mid-air. Using sensors placed throughout the exhibition, each drawing triggers a unique sound experience for the visitor. When a visitor interacts with a drawing, they will hear the music created from that student's unique bar path, offering a multisensory exploration of weight.
Spiro's project blurs the lines between information design and art, using drawings to create data for music production. The exhibition will also feature a live performance where Kevin Baldwin translates Spiro's movements into real-time sound, providing an immersive experience for the audience. Attendees will have the chance to learn Olympic lifts, creating their own unique drawings in air and sound pieces as part of the performance.
Kledia Spiro (1987, Tirana, Albania) As a multimedia, interdisciplinary artist, creating immersive videos, performances, and installations, Spiro’s work has captivated audiences with its unique exploration of the human experience. Her innovative projects continually challenge the boundaries of art, daily life and data. Born in Albania, Spiro trained with an Olympic weightlifting team. She explores the connection between strength, weightlifting, and daily life as a new celebratory ritual for understanding the relationship between the artist and the audience, as well as the present and the past. By experimenting with indeterminate methods, Spiro wants the viewer to access the otherwise inaccessible spaces. Her works are based on Freudian and Piagetian behavioral concepts: visions that reflect psycho-analysis, behavioral psychology, and a sensation of indisputability, combined with details of odd, eccentric, absurd, totemic, and humoristic elements. By questioning where one is and the concept of movement, Spiro investigates the manipulation of lifting objects overhead and its effects.
Spiro’s work has been featured internationally at Stratosphere, NFT Art Week Beijing, in addition to national exhibitions at the SAIC Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, Museum of Art, University of New Hampshire, Satellite Art Show, Miami Art Week, and the ProArts Gallery in Oakland, California. Spiro’s video-performance “Which Way” was featured in Times Square for NFT.NYC 2023. Spiro has performed in New York at the Queens Museum, Clio Art Fair: Armory Week, Grace Exhibition Space, Rosekill, Panoply Performance Lab, Java Studios and Le Petit Versailles. Her Boston performances include the Museum of Fine Arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Mobius, Piano Craft Gallery, BauHaus, Tufts University, and the New England Conservatory.
Spiro received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She also received the Museum Studies Certificate from Tufts University in 2015. She has a BA from the College of the Holy Cross in Studio Art and Psychology with an Asian Studies Concentration. In 2018, Spiro was the Keynote Speaker at the Centennial New England Museum Association Conference. In 2017, she was selected as a TEDx speaker and performer for “The Pursuit of Creativity.” In 2016, Spiro was the video director that received the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award for the Mayor's Art Challenge. In 2015, Spiro was also selected as one of five artists for the New England Media Symposium on the panel "Gender, Technology and Media: Hypothetical Schematics'' at Emerson College. In 2014, Spiro was appointed as the MFA Graduate representative for Exhibitions at the SMFA. Spiro was a visiting artist and guest lecturer at the College of the Holy Cross in 2014. She is currently a Post Graduate Teaching Fellow at Northeastern University and Assistant Professor of Design at Northeastern University London.
On View from January 5th thru January 28th, 2024. Opening Reception January 5th, 5:00 - 8:00 pm. Performance January 19, 2024, 7pm Artist talk with Joseph Wolin, January 23, 2024, 7pm.
Drawing in Air, Kledia Spiro, Multimedia Installation, 2018-2023