Kirsha Kaechele

Kirsha Kaechele (born 1976) is an American contemporary art curator, artist, and practitioner of sustainable architecture. She is founder of KKProjects, Life is Art Foundation.[1]

Early life

Kaechele was born in Topanga Canyon, California, and raised in Guam, Micronesia and Japan.[2] Her father was a retired RAND Corporation aerospace engineer and early practitioner of Rolfing.[3]

Career

In 1994, Kaechele began an informal education with travel over land to more than fifty countries in seven years, a hands-on investigation of the idea that life designs itself.[4] During this period, she met and mentored with a variety of thinkers, including Biosphere 2 creator John P. Allen, chemist Albert Hoffman, writers Tom Robbins and John C. Lilly, John Perry Barlow, Rodleen Getsic,[5] psychiatrist Oscar Janiger, artist Peter Nadin and German architects building sustainably on a Sannyasin commune in Maui, Hawaii.[6]

In 1995, she worked with the Shipibo ayahuasca shamans in the Peruvian Amazon.[7] In 1996, she performed with La Mama theater in New York City.

On and off Kaechele attended University of California, Santa Cruz, but in 1999, left just short of graduation to work with VH1 producer Tad Low on a travel show. The production took her to remote southern Lebanon, where she remained with a group of writers, philosophers and historians in Sur (Tyre), a nonpartisan observer in Hezbollah territory.

In 2000 Kaechele moved to New Orleans and joined the downtown art scene, collaborating with artist Matt Vis (Kid Calculator) of Generic Art Solutions on performance art projects and backup dancing for musicians Quintron and Miss Pussycat, MC Tracheotomy and MC Sweet Tea. She was a member of the 9th Ward Marching Band, an avant-garde marching band founded by Quintron.[8]

In 2006 Kaechele founded Life is Art Foundation | KKProjects, an art space composed of five deteriorating houses in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans.[9] The foundation invited local and international artists to create site-specific installations utilizing the houses and surrounding ecological and social environment as medium.[10] Exhibitions included artists from emerging to Tony Oursler, Mel Chin, Keith Sonnier and Robert Rauschenberg.[11]

The Life is Art Foundation was founded on an appreciation for ecological systems and natural order. The application of systems-based thinking to life and art was its core mission, as expressed through projects that married art with architecture, ecology, agriculture and human social order. The foundation served as a test site for ideas in these fields.[12]

In 2010 Kaechele left KKProjects and moved to Tasmania to join David Walsh and MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). She transformed four of the New Orleans art installation houses into 24 Carrot, a community garden where children grow, cook and sell organic produce.[13] The project introduces vegetables to a food desert, inspires healthy eating and teaches entrepreneurial skills. The project’s 2018 expansion includes a food truck, designed by children in the program, from which they sell dishes prepared with produce they grow. Menus are created by the kids in collaboration with celebrity chefs.

Kaechele founded MONA’s 24 Carrot program in Tasmania, a sister garden project in partnership with the Tasmanian Department of Education and private funders. 24 Carrot operates in thirteen primary schools in neighbourhoods of greatest need.[14]

Kaechele's curatorial work in the US included a land art exhibition of a living sugar cane field sculpture in rural Louisiana by Norwegian artist Anne Senstad, large-scale, site-specific installations in New Orleans’ City Park and Botanical Gardens for Voodoo Experience,[15] and a medical marijuana farm in California, Life is Art West, which donated all proceeds to the arts. [16]

In 2015 Kaechele returned to New Orleans to stage a gun buyback as a conceptual artwork / performance during the New Orleans Biennial, Prospect 3. It was the largest gun buyback in New Orleans’ history and played with libertarian values by using private enterprise and the free market to create gun control. The exhibition, set in an 8th Ward car wash, was promoted on billboards and rap radio stations throughout the city, and opened with performances by bounce and rap artists Big Freedia, Hot Boy Ronald and Mr.Serv On. The installation included a recording studio, The Embassy, where youth could lay tracks with celebrated local rappers for free. [17] The Embassy, intended to run for three months, was so popular that Kaechele decided to keep it open and build a permanent space to house the studio- as part of a larger school.[18]

Kaechele is building a school in New Orleans with architects Assemble and Room 11 in an abandoned 9th Ward union hall. The free school will serve 14 - 25 year olds and house The Embassy recording studio, a hacking school, art school, beauty school, fashion school and 24 Carrot culinary art school. All subjects integrate science, technology and social enterprise. The MONA project is a conceptual artwork entitled P5 1 L0V3 Y0U.[19]

In 2019, Kaechele launched the Eat the Problem exhibition at MONA: an attempt to draw attention to the problem of invasive species.[20] In addition to an exhibition at the museum, Eat the Problem also involved the launch of a cookbook with dishes created using invasive species, and a number of feasts at MONA.[21] Although well received by some reviewers, the exhibition also caused some controversy, with local newspaper The Mercury running a 'Cats on MONA Menu' headline[22] and The Conservation running an essay calling it a well-meaning but elitist stunt.[23]

Controversy

In 2005, Kaechele began to buy five properties in poor condition on North Villere Street in the St. Roch neighborhood in New Orleans, an area known for gun violence and poverty.[24] In 2006, the five houses became the headquarters of Kaechele's Life is Art Foundation | KK Projects, which staged exhibitions and other events there.[25] Kaechele also converted some of the houses into art pieces: the facade of one house was replaced by an oversized circular bank vault door to create a "safe house"; another was "pierced" by wooden poles and resembled an "architectural voodoo doll."[25]

In 2010, when Kaechele moved to Tasmania, she still owned the five properties and left them unoccupied.[26] As a result, the properties deteriorated even further, adding to the neighborhood's blight, and two have been demolished.[25] Kaechele, who owed back property taxes and code enforcement fines on the properties, blamed her inability to maintain the properties on the 2008 recession, and insisted in 2011 that she had always intended for them to be torn down and replaced by "green space".[24] The remaining properties were used by squatters, much to the dismay of local residents.[25]

Personal life

Kaechele lives in Tasmania and is a curator at MONA.[19] In March 2014, Kaechele married art collector and former professional gambler[24] David Walsh.[27] Kaechele and Walsh have one child, Sunday Walsh.[28]

Notes
  1. "Life is Art Foundation - KKProjects". www.kkprojects.org. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  2. "Sweet and sour cane toad — MONA cookbook goes to extremes in name of sustainability". www.abc.net.au. 2019-03-28. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  3. "Sweet-and-sour cane toad, cat consommé: Kirsha Kaechele serves up new approach to sustainability". the Guardian. 2019-04-17. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  4. "T Magazine - New York Times". www.nytimes.com. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  5. "Lower Ninth Ward Memorial - August 27, 2006". Rodleen Getsic and Kirsha Kaechele, New Orleans. Ghost Images.
  6. "Sweet-and-sour cane toad, cat consommé: Kirsha Kaechele serves up new approach to sustainability". the Guardian. 2019-04-17. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  7. "Kirsha Kaechele - Interview Magazine". interviewmagazine.com. 21 November 2008. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  8. "9th WARD MARCHING BAND PAGE". www.quintronandmisspussycat.com. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  9. Cohen, Ariella. "Interview: St. Roch art impresario holds forth from Tasmania on the wreckage left behind". The Lens. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  10. "Art Voices Magazine Interview" (PDF). kkprojects.org. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  11. "Art Papers Magazine, Review of Allonz a Lafayette by Eric Bookhardt" (PDF). kkprojects.org. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  12. "PSFK Talks to NOLA's Kirsha Kaechele of KK Projects - PSFK". psfk.com. 13 March 2009. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  13. "Kirsha Kaechele: Transcending the Quagmire | Assemble Papers". assemblepapers.com.au. 2019-07-31. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  14. "24 Carrot Gardens - 24 Carrot Gardens". www.24carrot.mona.net.au. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  15. "Voodoo Experience gets arty with curator Kirsha Kaechele". nola.com. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  16. Kennedy, Randy (11 October 2010). "Marijuana Is an Art Patron at Life Is Art Foundation". Retrieved 26 February 2018 – via NYTimes.com.
  17. Frank, Priscilla (23 October 2014). "One Artist Is Buying Back The Guns In New Orleans' Tough Neighborhoods". Retrieved 26 February 2018 – via Huff Post.
  18. writer, KEITH SPERA | Staff. "Former 9th Ward factory is home to recording studio, fashion school thanks to Australian benefactor". NOLA.com. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  19. "Kirsha's portal – Museum - Mona". Mona. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  20. "Eat the Problem – Kirsha's portal". Mona. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  21. Coslovich, Gabriella (2019-03-11). "Let them eat cane toad: MONA cookbook puts the problem on the plate". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  22. "Sweet-and-sour cane toad, cat consommé: Kirsha Kaechele serves up new approach to sustainability". the Guardian. 2019-04-17. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  23. Kratz, Svenja J. "MONA's Eat the Problem is possibly well-meaning but ultimately exquisitely elitist". The Conversation. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  24. Cohen, Ariella. "Interview: St. Roch art impresario holds forth from Tasmania on the wreckage left behind". The Lens. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  25. Times-Picayune, Doug MacCash, NOLA com |. "New Orleans Kirsha Kaechele Projects is now mostly in ruin". NOLA.com. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  26. d'Addario, John (2011-07-11). ""Artist, Entrepreneur, Opportunist"". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  27. "The Mercury, David Walsh's Wedding a Real Show Stopper by Michelle Paine". themercury.com.au. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  28. "Introducing Sunday". monablog.net. 21 July 2015. Archived from the original on 8 September 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
  1. Life is Art Website
  2. MONA website: Kirsha's Portal
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