Ian Kai Porterfield

Areas of Influence (2021)
32” x 42” Chalk pastel, charcoal, transparent colored film, metallic paper (x3)

This abstract drawing triptych represents three communities in three locations worldwide that the Ian belongs to. It depicts friends, family, acquaintances and their respective social circles –as vibrant pods. Each is colored in relation to that of chakras –the energy centers in the body. In creating associations between color, spirituality, and community, Ian reflects on which chakras were/are activated or blocked in these environments and relationships. The single red orb in each drawing signifies myself. Thus, Ian reveals the organization of intimacy without exposing other’s identity.

Ian Kai/Porterfield (they/them)

I probe the boundaries of intimacy. My artwork amalgamates my memories. It asks questions about classification, roles, and sensations.

Dance was my first creative passion, beginning in my childhood in Colorado. Outside my two years of technical training at Denver’s high school for art, I belonged to a competitive dance team and junior dance company. My final two years, however, were spent at an international school in Montezuma, New Mexico. Alongside four specialized dancers, I spearheaded the extracurricular movement program. I also worked in teams to develop performance-art and variety showcases. My practice has always been enmeshed with multiple perspectives, multiple identities, and multiple mediums.

Following a (2019) solo exhibition in New Mexico, I moved to Florianópolis, Brazil. There I facilitated a project customizing thrifted clothes with 15 youth within my apprenticeship. My artworks, throughout both of these locations, employed materials collected on their grounds or repurposed from my possessions. This has remained a foundation. In 2022 while in Berlin, Germany, I created a live multi-media installation with sculptures made predominantly of cardboard –scavenged from the streets or offloaded from businesses neighboring my art studio.

Since 2021, I have exhibited in NYC, at 80WSE Gallery and the Mamdouha S Bobst Gallery in the East Village, to name a few. I am performing in broader New York sites presently, including: a 7-hour gesture through Midtown where my mobile salon offered free haircuts; a collective of artist’s “walking tour” through the West Village, when I wore abandoned/repurposed furniture as a costume. I consider how art functions as experiential for audiences. Video and projection are consistent approaches to activating spaces, physical work itself, and dialogues not obvious. Sculpting, dancing, or performing personal narratives is my re-contextualization of love. They exemplify choice, honor, labor, and neglect under that label, “love.”

Artist Statement

I am an artist working at the intersection of dance, sculpture, and video art in New York, NY. Intimacy is an overarching theme examined through my practice. Embedding specific memories, and often personal memorabilia into my work, I contemplate the associations between cycles, (in)stability, addiction, physical and psychological health, and what we pass down [or pass between each other]. Motion and projection are prominent tools used to activate mixed-media installations. Movement is a means of performance on or off camera, in drag as “Miss Gender” or with my body unaltered (maybe in costume) but exposed; this content reflects on belonging at large, but often attentively, to my queer and non-binary identity. I am interested in using the art world to divulge and document the relationships within the family, between phone calls and in journal pages, and in the body.

In visual response to my history of moving from community to community, living within small cohorts [of working, teaching, cooking, etc], I gravitate to materials evocative of these formative memories. Objects employed in my work are often found or collected. Used Type 1 Diabetes equipment, and gifts from loved ones and from long-term programs of which I participated, are both common examples. Alternatively, objects are reconfigured by hand. These undergo a series of filters –inviting or not– to destabilize or exaggerate depictions of my past or encounters in my present. I use bright colors to entice, distract against, or infuse energy into [potentially painful] conceptual endeavors.

I willingly, as opposed to reluctantly or forcibly, left my home state of Colorado at 16 years old. It has since become a place of refuge in the in-between periods of living in other US states and countries abroad. Thus, my lived experiences have tested and questioned the creations, conditions, and definitions of: Home? Origin? Impact? Relationships with family members [by blood] are only a point of entrance. Unconfined, I desire to extrapolate from the social interactions that make me feel safe, regarded, and authentic versus those opposite [making me feel at harm, undesired, disingenuous, or reserved]. Are relationships an act of self-preservation or deterioration?

The work on display, Areas of Influence, is an abstract representation of a multiplicity of environments and their corresponding populations. The three portraits are grounded in an examination of my body within these communities. As the child of a Reiki Master, I digested knowledge on energy protection and healing, and practices of mindfulness and meditation, throughout my adolescence. The triptych pulls directly from this archive. Illustrating a study of the physical associations of chakra centers, color communicates my remembrance, my proximity to influences, and my expressions of alignment and obstruction.