Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 6

(Kerstin Brätsch and Debo Eilers)
Founded 2010

Painter Kerstin Brätsch and sculptor Debo Eilers produce work together as KAYA, a name taken from the project’s muse and collaborator Kaya Serene, the daughter of a friend, who was thirteen when the three began working together in 2010. KAYA’s work exists at the intersection of painting, sculpture, and performance. The physical components often have potential for future activation: the “Processione” and “body-bag” forms on view in the Biennial evoke objects used in pageantry or ritual, and lockers taken from the shared bathroom at Brätsch and Eilers’s adjacent studios have been refashioned into a ceremonial stage. The artists think of KAYA as a third consciousness, something encompassing and yet also beyond their individual practices.