Kristina Bivona will present the inaugural solo art exhibition Paper Dolls at 365 Foundation by filling the gallery with pop-up books and experimental prints. Acting as a bridge between women’s liberation and the complexities of being sexualized, underpaid, disenfranchised, and still celebratory for our identities Bivona grapples with high femme queer presentation in Paper Dolls. The exhibition will pull at the tangled fibers of femininity, criminality, sex work, capital, and stigma through playful prints made from the lotion that weeps when left on the wall, slick body grade silicone, Martha Stewart’s royal icing, and dollar store petroleum jelly. She will also share a double-sided tunnel book and an oversized book hanging from the ceiling, with a growing collection of multi-dimensional tunnel and carousel pop-up books. The exhibition will also feature a melting woman in candle form and an altar for alternative women’s health. Please join us during the March 8th- April 7th exhibition to experience over twenty years of Kristina Bivona’s experimental art. All works are for sale. Please join us for her upcoming opening, artist talk, and public events (TBA).
Kristina Bivona is a printmaker and book artist living in West Philadelphia. Her studio practice emphasizes the lived experience of sex workers and criminals through the whimsy of ephemeral materials and pop-up books. Bivona’s printmaking and book art practice extends to the Recess print shop in Brooklyn, New York, where she co-founded the studio with participants. She runs the shop with young court-involved youth and is a “teaching artist” alongside the renowned prison diversion project Assembly. She is also a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, Teachers College where she specializes in teaching printmaking as a tool of harm reduction and prison abolition.
Kristina has worked with her hands since childhood, and she has never been defined by any of the work she has had to do, including but not limited to professional domme work, prisoner, Graduate Fellow of Columbia University, train-rider/hobo, squatter (occupying and revitalizing abandoned buildings), parenting, and political activist. Through her art, Bivona confronts a society that has no problem objectifying women but criminalizes women who profit from their objectification.
For press inquiries, contact
na*****@36*.foundation
or call 484-280-7790