Mid-America Arts Alliance’s Culture Lab will be open on First Friday, October 4, 2024, in Kansas City, Missouri, and will feature an exhibition, this blasted tender beautiful world, just as it is, by Christina Shmigel.

Christina Shmigel (b. 1958) is a contemporary Ukrainian-American artist working in sculptural installation and drawing. Combining hand-made objects with unaltered acquired components, employing shifts of scale, and view point, the theatrical spaces of her installations are experienced through slow revelation, in time and through memory. Christina’s work captures those moments when ordinary reality shifts, revealing something intangible beneath its surface. Her installations create a space of playfulness, engagement, and opportunity for re-enchantment with ordinary existence. Currently, she maintains studios in St. Louis, Missouri, and in Bakersville, North Carolina.

Header photography: this blasted tender beautiful world, just as it is, by Christina Shmigel created with bicycle, training wheels, laser cut packing boxes. Photography by Bruno David. Courtesy of Christina Shmigel.