Kristan Woolford

Feb 27, 2025 - May 25, 2025
K!n€t!c Dr£@m$

Kristan Woolford, K!n€t!c Dr£@m$ (2025)

8-channel HD Video, sound, 7:25min loop

Using eye-popping collage aesthetics to, as he says, “to peel back the digitized layers of the subconscious and examine its relationship to cultural identity, markers, and signifiers,” Atlanta-born artist Kristan Woolford wryly addresses the spectrum of cultural richness and “vulturism” in hip hop and the American entertainment industry writ large.

With K!n€☥!¢ Dr£@m$, Woolford radically expands his earlier single-channel work fr33theL@nd (2023), providing a meditation on what he calls “indigenous and African diasporic resistance in the face of colonization.” Visualized through the movements of the Brazilian martial art capoeira, the horrors of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and hip-hop culture, Woolford’s piece is an urgent reminder of how excavating the past continually reshapes the present. Commissioned to be shown at Off the Wall, fr33theL@nd premiered as part of the Cinédance! series at the site in July 2024.

About Off the Wall @ 725 Ponce

The largest movie screen in the Southeast, illuminating Atlanta's Beltline Trail with film and video art from around the world. Curated by Gregory Zinman. This exhibition was made possible with the support of Emory University’s Arts and Humanistic Inquiry initiative.

Bios

Kristan Woolford

Born in Atlanta and raised in Stone Mountain, GA, Kristan Woolford is a commission based digital artist whose work seeks to synthesize the original pillars of Hip Hop culture with Social Justice themes. His background in documentary filmmaking inspires video collages of Afrofuturist and Afrosurrealist narratives.

Kristan has screened short films at venues such as Ciné, Plaza Theatre, and screened a feature length documentary broadcasted on cable television. He has served as Director, Producer, and Editor for a weekly internationally broadcasted television program and served as the Director of New Media at Atlanta’s public access television station People TV. As his work has matured, Woolford continues to push the boundaries of how digital mediums like video collages and projection mapping can encourage a deeper understanding of Black experiences in America. His video collage work has been featured in exhibitions such as The High Rise Show, Drive Thru ATL, Midtown Alliance’s Heart of The Arts, Off The Wall, and 30 Summers at Atlanta Contemporary.

Kristan’s video collage work relies on remixing and layering digital elements to document and collapse moments from the past and present using projection technology. As an aesthetic of his work, projection is meant to suggest a casting of alternate realities, and a call to see our current and future social climate through a nuanced lens focused on our country’s dark past to provoke healing and accountability.

Kristan is a Film Post Production Professor of Practice at Georgia State University, Visiting Lecturer of Film at Georgia Tech, and a Teaching Artist with several non-profits, serving as Chief Professorial Officer of eurketSTEAMlabs, where he works to train Atlanta’s future generation of digital creators. Kristan is a 2023 Atlanta Contemporary Nexus Fund Grantee recipient, a featured artist in Comfiart’s Design + Muse signature program, and in the 2023-2024 Midtown Alliance Heart of The Arts cohort as the inaugural Studio Artist in Residence at the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) hosted by Perkins + Will architecture firm. Kristan is a proud alumni of The Creatives Project Studio residency program, C4 Atlanta’s Hatch Intensive Program: For Artists Working With Community, Hampton University, and Georgia Tech.

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