Kristina Cranfeld

Once an Art School
Medium: 120mm and 35mm photographs
Year: 2024

An ongoing photographic and poetic work which documents current art-educational settings in the UK. Pristine façades, brilliant white walls, opaque glass, sealed windows, climate controlled rooms, clinical lighting, commercial carpet edge-to-edge. Clean designs, resembling corporate settings, eclipsing past creative environments. These purpose-built, supposedly spectacular spaces, are kept unstained, unspoilt, untouched, where artists deprived of personal corners, book these desolate suites by appointment only.

This work critiques corporate aesthetics transcending educational art institutions, while asking what future creative minds and works will stem from these neoliberal environments.

Empty chairs, 35mm, Once an art school

I am in the academic hospital
001 is my residing ward
What do you say my illness is?
And where is my cohort?

There are no walls, there are no doors
Just curtained, narrow corridors
There sounds crawl from many sides
And whisper darkly, go and hide.

I try to speak, I can not hear
My voice in instant disappears
I try to sit, I try to stand
I try to run but simply can’t.

Behind the curtains, there is a light
Be ware of it, it's very bright
You enter into a curtained room
You will be punished there through.

And I am ill with this disease
It’s called tremendosilencepedimus
I must absorb all sounds here
Can't utter words till I expand.

And then I burst with cruel force
Rip ugly curtains, break all bulbs
Throw TV screens against the floors
And celebrate until night falls.

Behind the glass, 35mm, Once an art school

The screen is the king here, 35mm, Once an art school

Bars, 120mm, Once an art school

By the window, 120mm, Once an art school

Behind the glass, 120mm, Once an art school

Behind the glass, 120mm, Once an art school

Cleaner, 120mm, Once an art school

Post it notes, 120mm, Once an art school

Hi office people r u ok, 120mm, Once an art school

Take your seat, 120mm, Once an art school

Yellow and Blue, 120mm, Once an art school

The screen is the king here, 120mm, Once an art school

A Single chair, 120mm, Once an art school

Behind the glass, 120mm, Once an art school