Artist Statement

Kris Bespalec is a researcher, educator, and multidisciplinary artist whose practice centers community building through interpretive history, site-specific installation, and physical narratives. She serves as Manager of School and Community Programs at the Hunter Museum of American Art and holds advanced degrees in sculpture and education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research and installations have taken her throughout the country, with projects exploring place, community, and the emotional, spiritual, and physical labor embedded within site-specific narratives.

Website: cbdavisart.com

Instagram: @kris.bespalec.art

Kris Bespalec’s Sacred Bodies: Sanctuary Opens at The 109 Gallery

Solo Exhibition Sacred Bodies: Sanctuary

Working with salt, plant-based fibers, dye, and illumination, Bespalec creates an environment that asks visitors not only to look, but to enter, move slowly, and become present within the work.

October 17th -December 3rd, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 17th, 6 PM - 8 PM
The 109 Gallery, Historic Downtown Chickamauga, GA

Some materials hold memory.

Salt preserves. Fibers carry touch, labor, and care. Through material, repetition, and illumination, Bespalec creates forms that feel simultaneously ancient and immediate, asking what it means to bear witness, to occupy a space together, and to leave something of ourselves behind.

Her practice moves between sculpture, installation, and social engagement, creating environments that resist the idea of the artwork as a finished conclusion. Instead, Sanctuary asks for participation through presence. The spaces surrounding the objects become as significant as the forms themselves, activated by the bodies moving among them.

At The 109 Gallery, the exhibition continues an ongoing dialogue surrounding materiality, ecology, ritual, and the invisible relationships that shape our lives. It is an invitation to move slowly, notice carefully, and consider how material and body become witnesses to time

Curated by Leah Dalton
The 109 Gallery