PARIS EVERYDAY
WHAT I BELIEVE IN? PARIS EVERYDAY
WHAT I DO? DISTILL PARIS INTO PORTABLE SYSTEMS OF MEANING
WHO AM I FOR? THOSE SEEKING RELIEF FROM MEDIOCRITY
WHAT SETS ME APART? I SUBMIT MYSELF TO CONDITIONS OTHERS OBSERVE FROM SAFETY
Most people observe from a distance because distance protects them.
I step inside infrastructure and let inertia govern me long enough to extract meaning.
I analyze lived systems until they reveal form.
WHY? BECAUSE I SAVED AN AFTERLIFE
Few know the bond that comes with saving the life of someone else. An afterlife, even less so. Paris was not chosen, it implicated me. My relationship to the city was forged through an act of ethical consequence: identifying the body of a murdered Australian friend while in college at La Sorbonne and researching Freud at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, thereby restoring narrative closure to a life otherwise suspended in absence, for her and her family that was a continent away. In that moment, Paris became binding rather than referential, the sole structure capable of holding the invisible torrents of grief, responsibility, and psychic survival simultaneously. The city is both the site of fracture and the apparatus through which coherence was rebuilt. Paris broke me and Paris saved me.
Jeanette and I, and Paris are forever inextricably linked. Paris stopped me from falling into full psychosis in the aftermath of what would be a nine year cold case that was eventually solved. The relationship that has transpired is symbolic and reciprocal. Paris is not merely interpreted through this work it is activated by it. The city needed a method of disclosure just as I needed a structure of coherence, binding our trajectories into a shared process of revelations.
My practice is personal, it documents my attempts at staying connected with the material world around me. This compulsion, called "anchoring," is a common byproduct that often accompanies agoraphobic and post traumatic stress disorders.
My practice is the antithesis of neutrality. It's about picking sides when it matters most, even at the risk to self. It's about speaking up for the voiceless and finding one's way back to self. It's about being passionate enough about humanity to be brave for it.
PARIS IS UNDEFEATED.
PAINTING IS THE TECHNOLOGY I USE TO AFFIRM MY LIFE AND THE WORLD I INFLUENCE.
Noted Studio Visits in Residency
- The Presidential Delegation of Benin
- Rafael Pic [Editor & Chief | Le Quotidien de l'Art]
- Natalia Smalto (Philanthropist)
- Dexter Wimberly (Independent Curator & Sr. Critic New York Academy of Art)
- Mame Thiaw Diop [Historian | Museum of Black Civilizations (Senegal)]
- Skip Arnold (Performance Artist & Guggenheim Fellow)
- Shiva Lynn Burgos Artist | Curator
ART AS ARTIFACT | Established between Paris and Los Angeles, Keariene Muizz distills Paris into portable systems of meaning. Evaluating cultural objects through the lens of psychoanalytic inquiry creation is treated as evidence as a being who needs proof. The vulnerable and exposed architectural landscape of Paris is the site for her work. She regards the sculptures as the secret citizens of Paris. The methods of her systematic investigation of the atmosphere occurs when physically installed throughout the arrondissements where she experiments with the psychological interplay of stimulus and subconscious imagined affects of iconography. Muizz's work intersects at the crossroads of convention and human experience. The cornerstone of her artistic practice is built upon The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud by the Hogarth Press, co-founded by Virginia Wolf, as Muizz spent half a year conducting in depth research comprised of all twenty three volumes at Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Born in Chicago, Muizz attended La Sorbonne and holds a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in Art & Analysis, combining art, psychology and computer science from California State University of Long Beach. Post educational studies were also conducted informally in nude drawing at the Otis College of Art & Design under Laddie John Dill.
