Dallas Artist Kristin Colaneri Celebrates Women Through Time in Photo Exhibition

The process behind Dallas artist Kristin Colaneri’s latest exhibition, Women & Icons, took place over the last two years, but Colaneri has worked on the idea for the project for nearly twice as long.

In the early months of 2020, the artist started to explore “intuitive” and “alarmist” feelings she began to sense about the U.S., its people and its overall structure. Channeling these intuitive emotions, Colaneri began to explore her continuous interests in ideas and spaces that were not always open to women, as well as artistic movements, symbols and icons that represent social change and development for female figures.

“I thought, well, now is the time I really need to peer into the window of my community's heart and soul,” Colaneri says. “I asked myself, ‘How can I act as a conduit for a process that I've already kind of gone through?’ And so I started it then and there.”

She soon began a yearslong project with a single photo of herself, embodying and “pouring herself into” French singer Edith Piaf, one of several “beautiful and tragic” female icons whose stories she'd always wanted to know more about.

Before delving further into working with other figures and artists on the project, the COVID-19 pandemic and other life events led Colaneri to shelve the project. After returning to the series in 2022, she and her 14-member collective can now share the fruits of their labor with their community. Women & Icons is a multicultural celebration of women through time that combines the work of 12 local artists — Colaneri, Ashley Ragsdale, Rachel Harrah, Lee Walter, Victoria Cruz, Havilah Bender, Monet Lerner, Alondra Liz Estremera, Monalisa Amidar, Frida Espinosa Müller, Tahsina Yusuf and Sorany Gutierrez — and two photographers, Debra Gloria and Can Turkyilmaz.

The project explores themes of female iconic representation and artistic movements in contemporary and historic times showcased through photographic imagery. It made its public debut at the Vickery Park Branch Library on April 22.

From Edith to Tina

The exhibition includes photos of each artist resembling a variety of female icons, from Piaf to Tina Turner. Colaneri says what is wonderful about each featured woman is that she “didn’t pick any of the ideas, but really just acted as a conduit.” Each artist who took part in the exhibition is someone Colaneri has long respected in the local art community, and she trusted each subject to embody her choice of iconic cultural character.

From a list of questions she sent each artist, Colaneri learned the different roles, historical figures, art movements and cultural symbols each artist was inspired by and identified with. Through the responses to her prompts, Colaneri says she and each of her fellow artists were able to open an inner window and look deeper into the meaning behind different historical references and people in time.

What resulted from the introspective and collaborative process was a space where the artist collective could “document the truth” behind each female figure and their stories in a way that felt authentic, objective and meaningful for a broader audience.

“That was really what was the most gratifying for me, is that I had to adapt,” Colaneri says. “I had to invite people, fellow creatives, into a space of trust and love and vulnerability. And I just felt honored to be there.”

While the project is certainly female-driven, Women & Icons includes aspects of other present-day topics beyond the historical women pictured. Colaneri says that, as any artist should, she has woven in a number of issues that have impacted her recently and throughout the exhibition's process, ranging from the GOP’s political decision-making to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To fully display the complexity behind the exhibition, each figure included in the gallery will be represented by a triptych consisting of three components: a photograph of the artist in her natural state, a photograph of the artist transformed into her icon and a collage crafted by Colaneri.

Each collage includes aspects of the gallery’s photographs combined with information on systems created around the male gaze or political ideas and events that have not always been fair to women in certain circumstances.

“It's sort of an amalgam of a lot of things that inspire the conceptual piece,” Colaneri says. “In addition to the women the gallery features, it also goes into politics and it goes into social class, and the weaving is really complex. A lot of it just comes out, again, because most artists, we consider ourselves conduits. And so there's a lot for the viewer to take in.”

There will also be performative elements added to Women & Icons through two live performances on May 11 and May 14 at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center. By getting to share every aspect of her yearslong project, Colaneri has come to find the general work of an artist as a noble one, as artists allow their communities to come into spaces where they can have a “quiet revolution in their heart and soul” before they walk away from the physical exhibition and continue to process it alone.

Throughout her process with the photo series, Colaneri found the collaborative experience and opportunity to experiment with the layering of a narrative to be uniquely rewarding. As a visual artist, Colaneri knows how personal one’s work and ideas can be in terms of the individual space and the process they use to create, which often adds challenges to collaborative pieces. By working with a collective of artists, she says she has learned how to let go and see things through her own filter while also gaining insight from others’ perspectives.

“It's not just you,” Colaneri says. “You're really relying on the ideas and heartbeats and people's lives and history to also inspire something that is going to move forward and be produced in the spirit of community.” Although Women & Icons happens to focus on women and female-identifying figures, Colaneri believes the exhibition and its themes craft conversations fit for anyone. To her, Women & Icons is about more than gender identity, it’s about questioning why we all can't coexist as a world after all of these years of existence, and learning how to start conversations about living a life of growth and unity.

“It's like Socrates said: 'The unexamined life is not worth living,'” Colaneri says. “So it's a point of examination, as well as exploration.”

The Women & Icons exhibition will be on view at the Vickery Park Branch Library (8333 Park Lane), April 22–30, and at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center (223 Jefferson Blvd.), May 2–14. Live performances take place on May 4 and 11 at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center. Tickets are pay-what-you-can. More information can be found on Eventbrite.