2024 / KC Studio Magazine / Interview with Kiki Serna on “Fantasmas”
Kiki Serna’s “Fantasmas,” confronts viewers with a profound exploration of existential inquiries into the very essence of memorialization. Stepping into the United Colors gallery in Kansas City, Kansas, one is immediately enveloped in an atmosphere where remnants of Serna’s parents’ letters give rise to a multitude of ghosts haunting the space. Serna refers to fantasmas as her memories. “I’ve always found it a need to work with memory, it goes back to the American experience; coming to this country as a young child and only having certain things that are truly yours, one of that being memory,” she said.
2024 / Dos Mundos / Interview with Kiki Serna on “Fantasmas”
Serna to present new exhibit at United Colors Gallery: Kansas City area artist Aquetzali “Kiki” Serna is gearing up to present “Fantasmas,” her new exhibit. Hosted at the United Colors Gallery in Kansas City, Kansas, “Fantasmas” will have a grand opening, scheduled for 5-8 p.m. Friday (Feb. 16).
Serna describes her new work as an expansion of her previous work. “What the work behind ‘Fantasmas’ is, in a lot of ways, something that I always worked with,” she said.
2024 / Artspeak Radio / Interview with Kiki Serna and Cesar Lopez
United Colors is excited to present a solo exhibition by Kiki Serna. When you migrate, you leave yourself behind. A copy of yourself, a “fantasma,” is left in your homeland. I believe that part of the immigrant experience is recovering fractured pieces of yourself – not only are we retrieving, but we’re also reclaiming, mending, and patching together pieces of our former and future selves. The trauma and pain that is assembled and attached to us during migration splits us into many pieces.
2023 / Johnson County Library / Interview with Kiki Serna
Aquetzali (Kiki) Serna is a Mexican visual artist living and working in Kansas, MO. Once undocumented, now part of the DACA program, Kiki craves healing, catharsis and a voice through her creative art practice. Her pieces develop from her inner feelings of alienation, confusion and fragmentation as an immigrant. Serna’s artwork will be on display at the Cedar Roe branch until December 21, 2023.
2023 / A new exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art features Latino artists from Kansas City
Twenty-two Kansas City-based Latino artists spent close to a year curating an exhibit called “A Layered Presence.” It is the third installment of the KC Art Now initiative to display more local work in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
2023 / ArtMoves Podcast / Artist and Curator Kiki Serna
In this episode, we speak with artist, curator, and champion of the immigrant experience, Kiki Serna. Listen along, as she so eloquently immerses us into her world, both with her poignant art and her thought-provoking words. Leaving other jobs, she has now taken a leap of faith to focus just on her art, and she’s had an inspiring path to this point …imagine being a wide-eyed 7-year-old seeing the grand Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for the first time, then one day showing your own artwork there! The stories of some of her experiences in this country may tug at your heart, but you will feel all the better for having heard them.
2023 / The LatinXProject, Soulcrafting Interiors / NYU
During a spring 2023 pilot curatorial residency with KC artist-run-project space Curiouser & Curiouser (CC), I was introduced to KC’s art world and was in conversation with multi-hyphenated art workers who are seeding projects in this Mississippi River Basin (MRB) city. As a Chicago-based art worker consciously seeking my contemporaries in the heartland region and beyond, the curiosities are: What projects are creating generous eco-systems that expand power and forefront the region’s potentials? What are the wants and needs of the region and who is facilitating them? How do these activities fit in the ether of global art and within the soul of contemporary American Art?
2022 / KC Studio Magazine / Kansas City Museum
The Kansas City Museum carries within its walls and on its grounds the past, present and future of our city. Falling into disrepair for a time, it has gone through years of major repairs and renovations to emerge in true splendor. Because of the One Percent for Art program, which stipulates that 1% of all publicly funded projects must include artistic projects in their budget, its renovations have come with numerous site-specific artworks from Kansas City artists. Executive Director Anna Marie Tutera welcomes input from artists throughout the design process, calling it “an incredible experience,” and this connection between the museum and the artists is evident.
2022 / KC Studio Magazine / La Onda
Over the past year, an exciting series of exhibits featuring works by young artists who identify as Latinx have been appearing in venues around Kansas City. Under the heading, “La Onda,” or The Wave, the exhibits, according to a recent press release, showcase “the rich and varied contributions of Latinx artists in Kansas City,” who draw “on a wide variety of experiences to shape the current collective identity.” Led by artists Cesar Lopez and Kiki Serna, the “La Onda” exhibits assemble the highly diverse practices of roughly a dozen artists to create a self-supporting platform for exhibition, curation and exposure.
2021 / Voyage KC / Conversations with Kiki Serna
Just like any personal and intimate art practice, my work offers an insight into my personal and familial narrative. I love using bright colors because they remind me of Mexico. Mexico has no rules with colors. People paint their homes whatever colors they want…you see so much greenery, beautiful plants and gardens. I’m still very homesick, so being able to recreate flowers out of engrudo, draw memories, paint textures of our home gives me a concrete reiteration of that which I miss. It’s a way for me to still exist inside of those spaces which are now obsolete or abstract…
2019 / Charlotte Street / Mobank Artboards
Only Here, Nowhere Else is a context specific collaboration between Kiki Serna and Xan Holt. Initially deriving from a conversation discussing the unique qualities and colors in the sky of Kansas City, this piece aims to capture a specific moment – a moment that only Kansas City can offer. Further revolving around the documentation of Kansas City’s sky throughout 2018, this collaboration aims to remind the viewer how unique our home is. Only Here, Nowhere Else reflects on the wonderment that one experiences when looking up in awe at the vibrant beauty that unfolds over us, and around us, that is so often held for granted.