Bio + Statement
Ellie Krakow is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, drawing and photography. She is currently making abstracted figurative work that combines bodily representation with forms inspired by the tools and architectures of medical intervention. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Foyer-LA, Underdonk, Marinaro, Below Grand, Goodyear Gallery at Dickinson College, NURTUREart, and Cuchifritos, and in group shows at venues including Asya Geisberg, Simone Subal Gallery, 1/9unosunove, Field Projects, Thierry Goldberg, Kingston Sculpture Biennial, and the Pula Film Festival. A NYFA Artist Fellow in Craft/Sculpture, her work has been supported by residencies at Sharpe-Walentas, Skowhegan, Yaddo, Abrons Arts Center, Shandaken: Stormking, and The Swimming Hole Foundation. Parallel to her studio practice, Krakow’s text-based works have been published in Precog, VECTOR, Lookie-Lookie, and Drain Journal, and her curatorial projects have been shown at The Whitney Museum of American Art, NURTUREart, and Mazmanian Gallery at Framingham State University. Krakow earned her MFA from Hunter College and her BA through study at Yale University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She is an Assistant Professor of Art and Ceramics Area Head at Hunter College.
Image credit: Kay Hickman
ARTIST STATEMENT
In my interdisciplinary sculpture practice, I use support structures as a lens to explore hidden labor, care and the awkward physicality of resilience. My work has focused on museum armatures that cradle ancient fragments, early photographic posing stands that immobilized bodies for long exposures, and architectures of medical support. I am fascinated by what these structures can teach us about vulnerability and tenderness; and what they reveal about striving, pretense and ableism.
Grounded in my experience of chronic illness, my current work, Comfort Corners, merges bodily forms with elements of hospital design. Through abstracted figurative sculpture, I aim to render the often-invisible realities of illness and claim a place for the sick body within the lineage of figurative sculpture. Drawing from the fleshy plastics and softened edges of hospital design – and from the reclining nude in art history – my figures morph into use-objects that fail at their presumed functions: bodies become carts with wheels that will not turn and information screens that display only close-up textures of medical spaces. These failures, edged with humor, are balanced by gestures of care, such as an arm extended to lend support. Like myself after decades of treatment and surveillance, these works inhabit a tender and uncanny space between flesh and technology, between what is known and what is felt.
My awareness of bodily physicality, shaped by lived experience, directs my material process. I work with gravity-laden materials, such as clay and gypsum, whose weight echoes the pull of flesh. The scarred surfaces created by my process are carefully smoothed, reflecting the effort to conceal imperfection while living with invisible illness. Photographs embedded in my sculptures mirror the perceptual experience of being a patient – glazed over in waiting rooms, hyper-attuned to minutiae, and imaged from the inside by advanced screening technologies.
Too often, the sick body is rendered either invisible or sensationalized. With Comfort Corners I resist both extremes, instead proposing vulnerability as a shared human condition – where fragility and resilience coexist, and where the sick body is central rather than marginal. By expanding how embodiment is represented, I hope to offer alternative imaginaries of dependency, adaptation, and survival; and to invite viewers to confront ableism, reconsider cultural narratives of illness, and reflect on their own experiences of fragility and care.
Parallel to my studio work, curating, writing, and public projects are integral to my practice. I regard these as opportunities to extend dialogue beyond the object, fostering cross-disciplinary exchange that in turn informs the development of my sculpture. Some recent projects: I have begun hosting Disability Creatives Gatherings for artists and thinkers exploring disability, illness, and bodily change – a space to share creative practices and build community. I curated a collaborative residency at the Swimming Hole Foundation centered on the theme of medical experience in the creative practice. As guest editor of the artist-run journal, VECTOR, I worked with artists whose work intersects themes from my own work – the body as a container for memory; and mirroring as a site of transformation. To celebrate the launch of the journal I curated an evening of performances at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In my role as director of Mazmanian Gallery I curated exhibitions that explored feminism & technology, assimilation & belonging, and self-care as response to trauma.