Kiah Celeste

Kiah Celeste (b. 1994, Brooklyn, NY) is a multidimensional artist whose work transcends any single category or medium. After earning her BFA in Photography in 2016, she moved into three-dimensional production. She is constantly searching for and obtaining objects from urban and industrial environments. Her artistic process consists of several components, and she often incorporates a motif to create a visual cadence of repetition, balance, motion, and variation. Her free-standing work is almost exclusively made from discarded or secondhand items and minimal hardware, creating something new and fortuitous from decay. Recent stretched spandex framed works explore the intersection of sculpture and two-dimensionality, all while retaining a foundation in found materials and physics. By emphasizing the importance of sustainability, Kiah’s work rejects the unnecessary nature of purchasing new synthetic materials that will inevitably deteriorate over time. Though these works are primarily made of synthetic, industrial, and household materials, their forms allude to the organic, the surreal, and the nonfunctional. She often defies the laws of physics with compositions that balance carefully through tension, weight, flexibility, and gravity. These texturally rich compositions highlight the inherent beauty of the objects while rendering their original practical functions obsolete. With her multifarious identity as a Black, Jewish, feminine, androgynous, introverted, and social woman, among other contrasting combinations and in-betweens, she finds respite from her sense of un-belonging in embracing seemingly disparate materials to create a cohesive whole. In doing so, she finds freedom in herself, the world, and her creative practice.

Celeste has completed artist residencies and exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including in Lisbon, Barcelona, New York, Chicago, and Italy. In 2021, she received the inaugural 21C Artadia Award in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as the inaugural Suzanne Fitzallen Jackson Foundation Residency. Her work has been acquired by the Speed Art Museum, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, and the University of Kentucky Art Museum. She has been featured in Hyperallergic, The Wall Street Journal, Burnaway, Artforum, and Art in America, which included her in “New Talent 2026.”