Socio-economic issues faced by North America’s consumerist culture inspired the content of KC Adams work. Her main focus had been investigating the dynamic relationship between nature versus technology. Adams drew her inspiration from popular culture, the internet, television, sci-fi, and biology to create work that blurred the line between fact and fiction. Some of her sources included the movie The Matrix, Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, nano-technology and genetic research. The exhibition Cyborgs at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art included two bodies of work called Cyborg Eggs and Cyborg Hybrids. The work cyborg albeo pullus [cyborg chicken eggs] or what Adams commonly referred to as Cyborg Eggs was a multi-media installation based on genetically modified foods. The work cyborg hibrida genitalis humanitas [techno-savy, creative, human; humour, education, culture] or Cyborg Hybrids were digital photographic prints that combined humans and technology to create a new classification of beings that attempted to counter stereotyping.
KC Adams is a Winnipeg-based artist who graduated from Concordia University with a B.F.A in studio arts. Adams has had several solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and been in three biennales including the PHOTOQUAI: Biennale des images du monde in Paris, France. Adams participated in residencies at the Banff Centre, the Confederation Art Centre in Charlottetown, the National Museum of the American Indian and the Parramatta Arts Gallery in Australia. Her work is in many permanent collections Nationally and Internationally. Twenty pieces from the Cyborg Hybrid series are in the permanent collection of the National Art Gallery in Ottawa
To learn more about KC and her current work, visit her website.
Cyborg // Interpretive Essay by Steven Loft
hy-brid: anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of elements of different or incongruous kinds
cy-borg: cybernetic + organism, a person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by machine technology
For KC Adams, the intersection of organic/technological and socio-cultural evolutions presented a realm of speculative invention. With Cyborg Hybrids and Cyborg Chicken Eggs, she presented two wholly different perspectives of our possible future while holding a mirror to our collective past.
In the Cyborg Hybrids series, Adams presented a cross-cultural, as well as a bio-technologic ideal, an intriguing interplay of contemporary race politics and analytical detachment. Her portraits were, at once, beautiful, sensuous and powerful, compelling and somewhat threatening (depending on your politics) visions of an indigenous hybrid world.
These cyborgs obviously inhabit a much different reality than we’re used to seeing in futurist theoretics. Adams sought to inhabit the world of the trans-biological and of manufactured “idols” with a radical indigeneity. Theirs is an indigeneity based on strength (power), unity, persistence and survival.
Her use of theatrical staging gave her portraits a contemporary, celebrity feel that belies their subversive and specific political edge. Her puns and double entendres, hand beaded and chosen by her subjects, spoke to a shared politic in a way that was layered with cultural significance and poignancy. The use of white, as an aesthetic as well as historico-cultural choice, posited a post-victim stance and articulates a clearly anti-colonial perspective to the purposefully “cover girl (or guy)” style of the photographs.
In a much less sanguine, though somewhat playful installation, Adams explored a convergence of technology and biology much less sublime. In Hybrid Eggs she offered a disturbing and satiric vision of our genetically modified future with a sort of “Flintstones meet Monsanto” aesthetic.
This work was indicative of Adams’ penchant for creating experiential environments and here she used an ancient medium (clay formed into vessels) to express her concerns for our technological future. Her dysmorphic, luminescent eggs became an indictment of our drive to “improve” nature and dominate our world.
A garden of earthly delights it certainly is not.
Steven Loft is Kanien'kehá: ka (also known as Mohawk), of the Six Nations of the Grand River, also with Jewish heritage. He most recently held the position of Director of Strategic Initiatives for Indigenous Arts and Culture and formerly Director of the Creating, Knowing and Sharing: The Arts and Cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples program with the Canada Council for the Arts. A curator, scholar, writer and media artist, in 2010 he was named Trudeau National Visiting Fellow at Ryerson University in Toronto. Loft has also held positions as Curator-in-Residence, Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada; Director/Curator of the Urban Shaman Gallery (Winnipeg); Aboriginal Curator at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and Producer and Artistic Director of the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association (Hamilton). He has curated group and solo exhibitions across Canada and internationally; written extensively for magazines, catalogues and arts publications and lectured widely in Canada and internationally.