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Kristina Austi (formerly known as Kristina Daukintytė Aas) was born in 1978 in Klaipėda, Lithuania. She lives in Bergen, Norway. Austi works with digital jacquard weaving, embroidery, installations, video, and collage. Her work appeals to our tactile senses through conscious and refined craftsmanship. She questions our perception and our relationship with the surrounding environment. Kristina graduated from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design in 2011. Since 2013, she has primarily worked with digital Jacquard weaving—a technique that combines traditional ideas of woven surfaces with new digital technology. She also works part-time as a textile designer at Innvik AS, a weaving mill in Western Norway.
Jared Theis was born in 1977. He earned an MFA from the University of California, Davis in 2012. While in California, he received the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant and the Robert Arneson Award. In 2014, he was awarded a Government Artist Grant (Statens Kunstnerstipend) from Arts Council Norway, Oslo. He has held residencies at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany; KHIO, the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo, Norway; the Joan Mitchell Foundation in New Orleans; the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Houston; and USF Verftet in Bergen. His work has been exhibited at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin; Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway; Mass Gallery in Austin, Texas; and Oslo Prosjektrom, Norway.
Jared and Kristina explore mythological and grotesque forms from different artistic perspectives—Jared through sculptural elements and Kristina through textiles. In their collaboration, they introduce AI as a tool to generate new visual interpretations based on their previous works, leading to a rich exchange of ideas and further artistic exploration. Their distinct but complementary approaches, along with the use of AI, inform the creative process, though the final works evolve independently, driven by their tactile and intuitive working methods. This dynamic approach results in a constellation of unsettling forms that both revive ancient narratives and remain relevant to our time.
https://www.jaredtheisart.com/