Christina Dietz
Christina Dietz (1994) is a sculptor/multidisciplinary artist from Central Pennsylvania. Dietz earned a BFA in Sculpture and a BA in psychology in 2017 from The Pennsylvania State University. In 2017, Dietz was awarded the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design’s Windgate Fellowship. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally and participated in residencies including the International Sculpture Center Residency at Mana Contemporary, the Idea Furnace Residency at Pittsburgh Glass, and the Food Studio Residency at The Meet Factory in Prague. Dietz most recently completed a public art project, a kitchen themed mobile parklet, for the nonprofit organization SSJN in Erie, PA. With objects, video and installation, Dietz explores the glut and mechanized world of post-industrialized processes as well as intimate actions and domestic spaces. Her work examines boundaries, sincerity, self worth and prescribed societal roles. Dietz currently resides in NJ where she works as a woodworking teacher at a private, K-8 school.
Artist Statement
Pastoral and industrialized scenery are seeded throughout my work as I play with both historical and more contemporary methods of food production. I’m interested in the folkloric draw of home cooking and traditional agricultural practices as well as the excess of mass production.
In my work, I combine food and agricultural processes with ideas of how we relate to one another. I explore my own navigation of social spaces and inherited roles as a woman in order to question the “shoulds” of society. With humor and irony, I twist the representation of familiar objects that characterize qualities of serving and making. These objects are taken from processes associated with food generation and adapted to fit a new context in order to challenge the expected roles and human value within production.
My work examines the need to make things with and of my body in order to be worthy of existing. This role of “selfless giver” or “vessel”, traditionally prescribed to women, becomes nearly cannibalistic when entwining the body with food preparation rituals. I poke fun at the connection of relentless productivity to self worth by using the body as a material. I make exaggerated products, systems, and devices that capitalize on the heat, motions, and secretions that the body already creates. I’m interested in making products and processes that join this existing market, where gendered bodies, especially women’s, are required to become both consumers and objects for consumption.
Instagram: @christinamdietz