Ghost in the throat

I use found photographs to interrogate the ways that white women, like me, serve the patriarchy in both public and domestic spaces. Employing intentional misapplication of traditional photographic tooling, I mark and deface the images of empire.

I grew up on the westside of Chicago in a low-income historically marginalized neighborhood. A stark awareness of my own whiteness offered a unique perspective on racial and power dynamics in this country. Perhaps because of this, my art practice has always been focused on identity. 

My photo-based interventions and counter monuments unsettle well-worn imperial attributes to consider alternative vocabularies. Time-based, collaborative and still works operate by blocking prevailing “master” white male narratives on both public and private lands. Each action embraces the efforts to remove, reinterpret, and restore landscape. 

I “interrupt” the false narratives planted across image and place, but also on the role of white women in this violent effort. Hiding behind a dual status, white women like me, have used the violence of white men and the institutions these men control as a soft power.

My collecting familial archives, interrogating print media, and performing in public parks, I address the endless assault of white supremacy and the seemingly innocuous materials of whiteness. 

Addressing the slipperiness of both medium and myth, my photographic interruptions highlight problematic relationships around space, race and memory.

Kelly Kristin Jones received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships including a 2022 Individual Artists Program Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, a 2021 Illinois Arts Council Agency Grant, a 2019 Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH residency, 2019 LATITUDE residency, and 2019 Luminarts Cultural Foundation Project Grant. She was a featured artist in the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial and the 2023 Chicago Humanities Festival.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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Sky Falling, 2020, is documentation of a collaborative "covering" of a contested monument in downtown Chicago, IL. Female-identifying artists joined me to take back the sky from the imperial gaze.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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Since 2018, I have collected images of white women posing with contested monuments across the country. This archive began with the discovery of ten images of my maternal grandmother posing with Columbus statues; the archive now has over 900 images.

© Kelly Jones - A custom "dodging tool" for a contested monument.
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A custom "dodging tool" for a contested monument.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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A contested monument in downtown Chicago, IL. My "Dodging Tools" series takes the traditional darkroom tool in sites across the US to hide violent statues and monuments from view. I have completed over 60 of these images.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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Installation at Filter Space Gallery in Chicago, IL of a collection of found decorative white columns and a photograph, "Untitled (David)" made in 2021 wherein I camouflaged a garden statue at night with printed photographs.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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Details from my ongoing archive, "White Women and Monuments" are paired with details from contested monuments in the US. This installation was included in my solo exhibition, "nice white ladies" at The Luminary in St. Louis, MO.

© Kelly Jones - The bust of a "great philosopher" is removed from a found photograph using erasers and sand paper.
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The bust of a "great philosopher" is removed from a found photograph using erasers and sand paper.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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An advertisement for a plantation wedding is scanned, printed at monumental proportions and sanding down so that only the cotton pulp of the paper remains where the cotton fields were once featured.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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Using erasers, I remove a "great white male" bust from a scan of a magazine advertisement. Print media is filled with subtle prompts to support and uphold the patriarchy and white supremacy.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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Images of stacks of books staged for magazines and catalogues are used as aspirational fodder and overwhelmingly feature white men. I use grease pencils to camouflage the names from sight in these oversized photographic prints.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project
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A collection of my "Dodging Tools" series is exhibited at The Luminary in St. Louis, MO. Each tool is made to "dodge out" a contested monument to white supremacy from the view of the camera.

© Kelly Jones - Image from the Ghost in the throat photography project

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