The Columbus Museum of Art presents KALI, ARTOGRAPHER - Joan Archibald (1932-2019) the first museum exhibition of the work of Kali, the recently discovered photographer from the 1960s. The exhibition, which features more than 70 vintage and contemporary prints by the artist, was presented in Columbus from September 10, 2022, to March 12, 2023. The Columbus presentation coincided with a major new publication on Kali from powerHouse books, designed by book designers Sam Shahid and Matthew Kraus of Shahid-Kraus nyc, with a lead essay by noted documentary filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer. The exhibition opened only a year after Kali’s posthumous debut which garnered international attention including a show at Staley-Wise Gallery in New York, and numerous articles in important publications on the discovery. The exhibition next travels to the Palm Springs Art Museum where it will be on display from November 19, 2023 to April 8, 2024.
| “The Columbus Museum of Art is very proud to present the first museum exhibition of Kali’s work," said Nannette V. Maciejunes, CMA Executive Director and CEO. “The discovery of a new artistic voice, particularly one that was overlooked during the artist’s own lifetime, is particularly exciting. Kali was not only a talented photographer; she also was an early practitioner of experimental and alternative photography with which we are so familiar today. We also are pleased to be the first art museum to acquire works by the artist.” |
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Born Joan Marie Yarusso on Long Island, Kali was interested in art from early childhood. Her nascent interest was encouraged by her stepfather, who introduced her to community art programs and art museums where she developed a love of the Old Masters. Though primarily self-taught, Kali attended the New York School of Painting and later the College of the Dessert in Palm Springs. She married young (becoming Joan Archibald) and soon became the mother of two. In the summer of 1962 at the age of 30, she reinvented herself, abandoning her life as a Long Island housewife and mother, and like many of her contemporaries headed to California Page 1 of 3 and a new life. It was here she rechristened herself Kali after the Hindu goddess of time, doomsday, and death. As her daughter Susan explained many years later, “My mom needed to expand herself. “
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After a flurry of public recognition in the early 1970s, Kali inexplicably receded to the shadows, yet continued to create art privately through the mid-2000s. When she died in 2019, she left behind a hidden archive of photos, astonishingly encapsulating a bygone dazed, psychedelic, hippie L.A. Her creative output falls into three distinctive bodies of work – an initial burst of experimentation which she named Artography since they were a distinct combination of painting and photography, often treated with spray paints and a variety of natural elements; an overlapping investigation of Polaroid photography, often layering landscape and portraiture onto one another in a single image; and a much later fascination with charting UFOs and other paranormal light phenomena.
Following her mother’s death, her daughter Susan discovered nearly 800 Artography prints in her mother's Pacific Palisades home in sealed boxes in closets, hundreds of Polaroids, and dozens of rolls of undeveloped 35 mm film. “It sat unseen, in great heaps, hidden in white Samsonite suitcases, for decades. The discovery of the work, all at once, and almost all of it never seen, is remarkable, and a distinguishing feature.” notes Matt Tyrnauer, “It’s the Vivian Maier effect, after the seemingly ordinary nanny who also gained posthumous renown after leaving behind a massive trove of remarkable work.”
The exhibition is organized by the Columbus Museum of Art in collaboration with the artist’s estate. The show is co-curated by Nannette Maciejunes, CMA Executive Director and photographer, Len Prince.
A national tour of the exhibition will follow the show in Columbus with dates available beginning in May 2023 through 2036. The tour is being organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles.
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