Photo by Robert Remme
Kenzi Rayelle - Portrait
Kenzi Rayelle
With her artistic practice, Kenzi Rayelle identifies creative reality as the transcendental spirit. She observes the human body as a vehicle for the self—emotions, vulnerability, pain and all. Through several different media, Rayelle incorporates macabre and absurdist imagery into her work to draw on themes of trauma, healing, self-actualization, and reconciling the past with the present.
“It took me a very long time to be okay with how dark my spirit can be,” Rayelle remarks. “I hid from my honest self for quite some time. This is my form of light, and there’s joy in that. That’s my spirit.”
Originally from Indianola, Iowa, Rayelle first found creative joy in film, having been a movie buff from a young age. “I would watch every strange or unusual film I could get a hold of,” she remembers. “Anything that had practical effects, I was so there. It made me feel so alive to be consumed by something mysterious. It felt like magic.”
Trauma’s Impact
High school became where Rayelle first experimented with film, theater and sculpture. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Printmaking. Meat, An Exploration of Family Trauma, Rayelle’s senior thesis exhibition, was her first time exploring the impact of trauma on the present day, specifically regarding generation abuse towards women in her family. Using large-scale printmaking techniques and drawing on her family’s long history of quilting, she created a cannibalistic butcher shop, complete with “meat” and Victorian-style advertisements.
“Trauma can be carried generationally, which is why it was so interesting to see the connections as I created these pieces,” Rayelle elaborates. “I really sat with how I wasn’t alone in this abuse I endured, and how it affected my mom, aunts, grandma - even if they were seen as catalysts as well. Through this morbid lens, I still managed to make it a little more tongue-in-cheek.”
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Immersive Opportunities
Rayelle moved to Milwaukee in December 2021. Shortly after finishing school, Rayelle began envisioning her work on a larger scale. She wanted to create opportunities that were as immersive as the feelings she had as a child being consumed by strange, macabre films. Around the same time, Rayelle stumbled upon The Evolving Self by Dr. Robert Kegan, a book about adult development and trauma.
In 2023, Rayelle began working on her lifelong series Innerconnectivity, where large-scale installations explore various narratives from the past to the present. The first installment of the series uses viscera, entrails and tumors, each made with textile and clay, to represent the impact of trauma on the present self.
“Akin to my senior exhibition, I am very analytical and like to understand where certain stuck points and anxieties come from,” Rayelle explains. “I am sharing the moments in time the trauma occurred and how I react.”
She continues, “I am seeing and hearing my past selves really feel their hurt and rewriting their narrative. There’s so many people who would benefit from that, and that’s all I can ask to give with my contemporary practice.”
Sick Inside?
Photo courtesy of Kenzi Rayelle
The Starving Sick - Kenzi Rayelle
'The Starving Sick' by Kenzi Rayelle
Rayelle is also a recipient of the Mary L. Nohl Suitcase Export Fund, which she used for her first solo exhibition at Iowa City’s Public Space One. She has continued to explore themes of trauma with recent pieces like Specimen MMV and The Starving Sick. On the latter, Rayelle shares, “I created this piece in response to the current times. People have a hungry ‘sick’ inside of them that continuously wants to be fed, one way or another, whether it’s with how they treat other people or how they treat themselves. I see it as this gnarly being, and I wanted to portray it as very tumorous.”
Being a multi-faceted creative, Rayelle has tapped into self-portraiture through short film with an upcoming series called Current Homeostasis, as well as through abstract paintings, inspired by her experiences with derealization and self-actualization.
“As someone with an extensive history of trauma, it can be easy to get lost in the narrative my brain can create,” Rayelle notes. “I logically am aware of who I am, but my self-portraits are a means to visually ground myself. Yes, I am actually the person my heart tells me. Yes, I do deserve to live as my fullest joy. Yes, I am more than what others have said I am.”
One of Rayelle’s present goals is to build a large-scale community project involving other artists. She currently offers freelance creative direction and design work, and is an accomplished performer, musician and stagehand, having performed with Inside A Dream: A Music Tribute to David Lynch. As a fun side project, Rayelle created the absurdist-inspired Foot Pie in 2024, which she entered into a baking competition at the Iowa State Fair.
