April 26 – June 8, 2024
The Art Incubator Gallery
Opening Reception: Friday April 26th, 7 -10 pm
Free admission
All Guts, No Glory – a body of most recent and compelling works by Krissya Iraheta, an emerging American-born and Edmonton-based interdisciplinary visual artist – is an exploration of lost innocence and resilience in the darkest of times. Iraheta brings together themes of trauma, religion, sexuality, interiority, and the harsh struggle to suppress vulnerability in order to survive.
Through painting and sculpture, Iraheta cultivates a mysterious and evocative world where the gruesome and the delicate marry. However, this world is more complex than bubblegum pink meets exposed organs. The works are a manifestation of Iraheta’s reserved memories as the child of an immigrant family, born into Catholicism, and subjected to what it means to be a Latina woman. What it means to question God, experience fetishization, sexual solicitation, and generational trauma. Embedded within such themes are moments of humor and sarcasm through Iraheta’s use of juxtaposition, a pastel palette, and adorable creatures with unfavorable desires – creating absurd and amusing scenarios.
As Iraheta says: “… there is a cruelty that lies within existence, within growing up, within womanhood. To grow up all too quickly and learn how to survive hardship, no matter how terrible it may appear.”
All Guts, No Glory follows Iraheta through a helpless race from fate, experiencing the highs and lows of a deteriorating relationship with religion and the cruelty of human nature. Caught in the middle are many of the confounding feelings we all have about many things in life: state and religion, spirituality and sensuality, love, and vulnerability. Fantasies of otherworldly pleasures are met with the earthliest of evils. According to Iraheta, All Guts, No Glory references the act of acknowledging one’s own insignificance while begging for martyrdom.
Artist’s Biography
Krissya Iraheta is an emerging American-Canadian international and interdisciplinary visual artist based in Edmonton, Alberta. She received her Fine Art Diploma from MacEwan University in 2019 and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 2022. In her practice, she explores themes and psychologies around trauma and human sexuality based on her experiences and perspectives as a displaced Salvadorean woman. She predominantly uses painting and mixed-media sculpture to tell these stories. Iraheta is an alumna of the NE Sculpture Gallery Factory Artist’s Residency in Minneapolis, MN . Also, she has participated in Nina Haggerty’s RBC Emerging Artists Project and SNAP Gallery’s Queen Mary Park Poster Project. Previously, she has exhibited her works with the Stollery Gallery, HUB Gallery, NE Sculpture Gallery Factory, DC3 Art Projects, and FAB Gallery.
Top Image: Crocodile Blood (detail) 2024, oil on canvas.
Photo courtesy of the artist
