FLIGHT by Crystal Z Campbell.

Installation view of FLIGHT by Crystal Z Campbell. Photo: Trayson Conner, courtesy of Oklahoma Contemporary.

VIEWFINDER by Crystal Z Campbell.

Installation view of MODEL CITIZEN by Crystal Z Campbell. Photo: Destiny Green.

Detail view of MODEL CITIZEN by Crystal Z Campbell. Photo: Destiny Green.

Luminescent in a Homemade Field by Crystal Z Campbell. Photo: Miller Photography.

Post Masters

Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker who finds complexity in public secrets — fragments of information known by many but untold or unspoken.

Artist Bio

Post Masters is an experimental film, performance, painting, and publication project considering intersections between the United States Postal System (USPS) and US Military through the lens of both Filipinx and Black histories. Throughout the project, the US-Filipinx relationship will be considered alongside parallel histories of Black Americana in US expansion and imperialism, using the artists’ intertwined Black and Filipinx family histories as a viewfinder to frame what it means to be(come) American.

Discipline
Installation, Video Art
Award Year
2022
Status

In Progress

Themes

Creative Capital Carnival 2022

A Black and Asian person stands next to a window wearing a pale denim button shirt over a black tank top, looking directly into the camera, left of center. Their curly hair is black (with gray streaks) and is half-pulled up over their head, and curly hair hangs loose just above the shoulders, framing the neck. A small gold necklace hangs just above their heart, with two charms. The bottom two panes of the window hold two transparencies, and the light coming in casts a pink glow upon their left shoulder.

Crystal Z Campbell

Oklahoma City, OK

Crystal Z Campbell, is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descents. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell’s works use underloved archival material to consider historical gaps in the narrative of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, revisit questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks’ “immortal” cell line, and salvage a 35mm film from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn as a relic of gentrification.

In addition to the Creative Capital Award, select honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts, Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, MAP Fund, MacDowell, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, and Franklin Furnace Award. Exhibitions and screenings include SFMOMA, Drawing Center, ICA-Philadelphia, REDCAT, Artissima, Studio Museum of Harlem, Project Row Houses, SculptureCenter, Cinemigrante, EMPAC, and DocLisboa. Campbell was a featured filmmaker at the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar, and their film, REVOLVER, received the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival. Campbell is currently a Visiting Associate Professor in Art and Media Study at the University at Buffalo and lives in New York and Oklahoma.