Krystal Ramirez

Krystal is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is centered around labor and the consumption of the brown body. She's a second-generation immigrant from the working-class landscape of Las Vegas, Nevada. The visual language and written text within her work reflect her family and personal history. Employing materials such as plastics, drywall, and paper, she highlights erased labor and focuses on the material's impact and presence in space while honoring its life cycle. Krystal uses bright, fluorescent colors to create a sensory and emotional experience, referencing her first sensorial experience at the Catholic church and the neon-clad landscape of Las Vegas, her home. She often recontextualizes found text or original writings. Employing monochromatic color palettes in her large-scale geometric works, they command attention and seek to show how the grotesque and outrageous are delightful, tender, and even funny. She wishes to continue conversations on formalism, to include race, gender, and more nuanced American experiences. By introducing instability to language and imagery, she creates a space to explore impermanence in areas we like to think of as stable and fixed. She received a BFA in Photography from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) in 2009 and is currently an MFA candidate in Art Practice at Stanford University.