Kenzie Wells’s interdisciplinary art practice merges sculpture and performance into installations that probe the inherent queerness that humans share with the planet Earth. Using outer space and its anomalies as sites for speculation, they construct everyday scenes from the warped side of the universe. Within these immersive spaces both micro and macro markers of bodily aliveness are petrified in a condensed and crystalized state. Wrinkles symbolize formations on skin as well as Earth’s surface, holding time, tension, and trauma in their indentations. Through the mysterious ambience of deep space, their installations give form to the distorted mental landscapes caused by social structures of gender and sexuality.

Wells has attended residencies at the Wassaic Project Artist Residency in New York, Oxbow School of Art and Artists’ Residency in Michigan, and Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. They have exhibited nationally in galleries, art fairs, and museums including: SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, MoCA Tucson, The University of Arizona Museum of Art, and Torrance Art Museum, CA. Originally from Knoxville, TN, Wells received their BFA in 2015 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and MFA in 2020 from the University of Arizona in Tucson.