Join us for an intimate conversation about parental grief, art-making, and the archive behind our current exhibition What Not To Say.
Studio DDLA is proud to present “What Not To Say”, an unflinching exploration of parental grief in conjunction with raw emotional landscapes by A.R. Keiner. This series of works honors and acknowledges the complicated space of mourning and motherhood.
Named for a short comic book I wrote after the unexpected death of our son in 2012, “What Not To Say” juxtaposes a suite of original landscapes with a selection from “Archive of the Dead Baby Club: 2012-2019.”
The landscapes and representations of the physical world serve as backdrops for scenes of grief, mourning and bereavement. In the shadow of these works, viewers will have a rare opportunity to explore the archive’s collection of drawings, notes, images, artist books, photographs and diaries chronicling my research into other artists who survived the death of a child, and the social practice that emerged with newly bereaved families.
-A.R. Keiner
A.R. Keiner she/they (b. Anchorage, Alaska)
Alexis Roberts Keiner is a Los Angeles-based artist working in drawing, painting, social practice, and archive. She received her MFA from San Francisco State University School of Art (2020). A.R. has presented her work and research at 120710 Gallery (Berkeley), Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, the University of Chicago Smart Museum of Art, ReImagine End of Life SF, Stanford University’s Medicine X, Ruby Room (Juneau, Alaska), and Colorado College (Colorado Springs).
Alexis was a California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellow 2021-2022. She is a member of the Bay Area critique group WOWMOM and is currently a contracted researcher with Stanford University School of Medicine where she works with the intersection of Art, Advocacy, and Medicine. A.R. Keiner teaches in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
