Avi Kendrick
​
Queer Love, 2020
oil on canvas
30 x 30
Artist Statement
My work often explores concepts of self, identity, and experience. I am often drawn to both document and process happenings in my life – current and past – through an artistic medium. As a queer, nonbinary, trans artist, I often explore and focus on gender. Being transgender is highly medicalized as an identity; for the world to view you as you are, you need to physically change your body. I have gone through the “necessary steps”, taking hormones and getting gender-affirming surgery, but I sometimes wonder if I would have felt the need to do these things if I lived in a vacuum. To be clear, I do not regret my decisions; I am happier for them and love the way I feel having made them. As it is such a major part of my life, ideas around relationship with body is what I focus on the most. I work from the things that I know. I am someone with several mental illnesses. These impact me on a daily basis, and also are main focuses within my work.
About Avi
Avi Kendrick is a queer trans multimedia artist and digital media maker. Their work is driven by experimentation, and primarily focuses on themes of self, survival, and resilience. Avi grew up in a small town in Vermont. Their career began in kindergarten when they started selling their drawings at their local Farmer’s Market. They continued this summer tradition up through middle school and has been telling stories ever since: leading them to participate in several ethnographic film-making trips including to Rwanda, NYC, and Detroit.
Being a storyteller has led them to Ithaca College, where thy will be graduating from as a Film, Photography, and Visual Arts major, with an Anthropology minor. At IC, they have been the Ithacan’s cartoonist, been a Resident Assistant, been on the Spectrum executive board for three years, and received the Peggy R. Williams award for Academic and Community Leadership. Their favorite artistic mediums include oil paints, photography, and pen. Most recently, they have been working with a liquid emulsion, watercolor paper, and paint to create a multimedia photography series about loss of family, for which they have received a James B. Pendleton grant.