Karen Graffeo

I am a southern prodigal daughter, born in south Mississippi and living in Alabama.

I have traveled extensively and have chosen to make work within cultures that both match and contrast my ancestry. I consider my art to be cultural diplomacy devoted to trust and intersectionality. I am in service of story and raw honest visual truth. I work from my documentary/humanitarian projects to inform my art which encompasses installation, performance and mixed media. I live in Alabama and my artistic practice is focused by “Southerness.”

Art is an authentic space for processing story and the sensations of life. My family matriarch, known as Mama Pearl, was a primary inspiration to me. She was not allowed to swim because of strict standards of southern propriety. She amazingly renegotiated propriety through a deliberate ritual. She would volunteer to supervise us as children on swimming outings to Cedar Creek, she would scold us from the shore of Cedar Creek, wade in for more emphasis, then stumble and fall into the water. Finally, she would announce, “Now that I am wet, I might as well swim.” She swam powerfully with her dark dress swirling within the swift currents. Her pinned up white braids would unfasten and float like magic white snakes. Mama Pearl taught me that there are times in life to dive in and resist the pull of currents. And this is truly the art life. I fall into life and story and trust the visual language of art.