#SignsOfTheTimes
Complex, and unclassifiable, kHyal’s mixed media work riffs off of pop culture icons and performs like a Rorschach Test in a behavioral science lab, tugging at the neurons of each viewer, and born to challenge perceptions. Using ordinary objects snatched from dumpsters, recycle centers, flea markets, tag sales, thrift stores, the ocean and the street — assembled with raw precision in a dazzling cacophony of visual clutter — each piece decidedly explodes the human-centric flaws, foibles and sometimes tragic outcomes of a plastic society.

The work speaks to our imperfections and glazed ideals, actions taken on that which we once professed to love. What we aspired to yesterday, is what we throw away today — leaving our emotional bonds, saliva, bite marks and fingerprints behind — often on objects made from materials that will never decompose, and would otherwise be left to the landfills, in shapes we form attachments to, then get bored of because they have no real meaning. Glitter, rhinestones, rainbows, and unicorns. Overused clichés and superficial samenesses. A vernacular of nothingness.

kHyal’s work is an archeological dig, an observation of the mess we call mankind, in a rearrangement of the discarded ordinary into an awkward form of self-portraiture through vignettes of childhood memory, sometimes blended with current events. Via a highly personal saga, the past is unearthed and merged with the future in stories told through the immediacy of quickly juxtaposed objects, much like when children who suffer trauma are asked by psychologists to visualize their experience through puppets or drawings. Through each story, obscurity surfaces in a remix of the banal malaise of society at large into a contemporary primordial ooze. Here, we journey into microcosms where what was unwanted, rejected and discarded becomes elevated and seen anew — bringing with it an awareness of the urgency for action.

Sustainability has always been a center point for kHyal. She is a member of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, completed Beyond Plastics grassroots advocacy training, and is a Certified Climate Reality Leader. Most recently, she was part of the worldwide team invited by Seth Godin to rally for climate action. As a cross-functional collaborator, writer and strategist, her work included spearheading the online sustainable fashion resource guide, contributing to the LinkedIn Learning course “34 Things to Know About Carbon and Climate,” creating content for “The Daily Difference,” and producing a standalone event as part of the global signing event for The Carbon Almanac, that won the “Most Insightful Data Book” award from Data Literacy in 2022. 

#ARTasFASHIONasART
kHyal’s fashion-based work deals with body image and artist as kinetic sculpture. Built around the performance of everyday actions, the work sometimes plays with the notion of celebrity and brand with its wagon hooked to the art fair scene. It is an ever-evolving lab leveraging color, pattern, messaging and movement as fuel for personal and collective social healing. Each iteration uses filtered interaction as a platform for perpetual mutation.

Read more in the article “Crushing fashion, art, business and brand into a storm of pattern, surface design and wearable art. Meet the complex kHyal^™.” by Kari Britta Lorenson, Founder, KnotWe and Digital Fabrication Residency.

At the forefront of technology in the early 80s, kHyal was among the first wave of self-taught artists using personal computers to create immersive multimedia installations and live MIDI performances with video and computer animation. She was a member of Yale University’s Amiga Computer Users’ Group, a contributing member of Rhizome (now part of the New Museum) and cofounded an Internet users group when professional creatives using computers were a scarcity. 

kHyal’s self-portrait collage and assemblages were first exhibited in the inaugural years of the Outsider Art Fair through Henry Boxer Gallery, London and featured in Raw Vision magazine. The work has been shown by Margaret Bodell, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, The Folk Art Society and the American Visionary Art Museum. In 1994, her simulated AI-based sculpture was featured in Ricco/Maresca’s “CODE,” an international show of digital art sponsored by Microsoft. In 1996, her work was exhibited at 55 Broad Street, Manhattan’s first wired network building. She appeared on Cherry Bomb, Art Dirt and The Silicon Alley Reporter at the ground-breaking live-streaming arts/tech network, Pseudo. Then, in 1997, launched a pilot live-streaming show at the American Film Academy in partnership with OnlineTV.

Currently, kHyal creates mixed media art, wearables, illustration and character design under the registered trademark MegaGlam. She is also the creator of The Weather sKwirl™ (her alter ego) and produced an original cartoon for 730 days straight between 2010–2012 that garnered media attention, inclusion in art books, public art commissions, private art sales, and a product line that has been featured in stores, galleries, art fairs and street art internationally. P!Q Grand Central Terminal and Rockefeller Center locations featured kHyal’s original art and product design in her own branded section in each store.

Described as Impervious to boundaries, kHyal transcends established categories and labels, melding cross-disciplinary worlds into a practice she fully owns. A purview that includes combinations of mixed media, fashion, textile and surface design, graphic design, street art, photography, collage, writing, performance, technology, sound design and material sustainability while surfing the edges of body image and behavioral psychology. The work has gone beyond the self-healing benefits of a consistent art-making practice — to the artist as public art, often integrating themes of human rights and environmental activism.

kHyal has worked as Chief Creative Officer in experiential design on projects for the Whitney Museum of American Art, Lincoln Center, BRIC Arts Media, BAM and the New York Public Library. She continues to work with cutting-edge technology,  though she just as readily builds analog sculptures out of ocean and landfill plastics or writes poems with a pencil on vintage paper.

kHyal is a creative activator, designer, writer, speaker and educator. 

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