Kimberlee Koym-Murteira

Bedroom Soliloquies

During the pandemic, I invited strangers into my bedroom. This skipped the usual stages of Zoom decorum, opening up straight into the interior of my world. I have often shied away from the clarity of language, but I came to enjoy letting a provocateur part of me out. My video series, Bedroom Soliloquies, has come out of that time and marks many life transitions: vulnerable truths of trauma, patriarchal & hetronormative society, and the role mothers and women are expected to hold. Hugging is one video of this series, noting the additional challenges of intimacy during this time. I claim the space I inhabit as sacred, whether virtual, live or prerecorded.  

The comfort of colors and textures of home   surround me.  Rose color candles burn with golden warmth and illuminate water filled jars - remnants of my sculptures and spiritual practices. I intersperse the video self portraits with 360 degree footage lending a simultaneous sense of distortion and harmony, beauty and apparition. The alteration of the image allows me to play with light, image, and color recapturing the lost joy of my childhood. 

I am dyslexic. Writing has been a difficult and painful chore. Something I had little time or interest in doing, but a necessary support to my art practice.  Now I realize I am not at war with language, instead I am living the paradox of being an artist who doesn’t like to be seen.  I began breaking open, unearthing truths, vulnerabilities, passions, releasing pent up frustrations held for a lifetime of being a good girl and fifth generation Texan.  

Soliloquies held in silence
For decades
Unleashing righteous rage
Torrents of tales 
Shaking the ground
to rebirth
The seed cracking opens up through the dirt, manure, and time of nature.

Vulnerable truths of trauma, patriarchal society and the role mothers and women are expected to hold. 

I support truth, sincerity, and vulnerability.