Krista Svalbonas: Displacement

The American-Latvian artist and this year’s solo artist in the Framing Vision category, Krista Svalbonas, is fascinated by the effect of architectural form and structure on the psychology of the human condition and her cultural background as an ethnically Latvian/Lithuanian artist informs this interest. Krista ́s parents spent many years after the end of World War II in displaced-person camps in Germany before they were allowed to emigrate to the United States.

Svalbonas’s exhibition “Displacement” investigates her family’s childhood memories of temporary housing structures, that were appropriated from other (often military) uses to house tens of thousands of postwar refugees. Svalbonas’s connection to this history has made her acutely aware of the impact of politics on architecture, and in turn on a people’s daily lived experience. Svalbonas ́s work explores architecture’s relationship to cultural identity, social hierarchy, and psychological space.