Kris Rumman is a Palestinian-American artist from Ohio, working with glass to create sculpture, installation, and more recently, writing. Drawing on Arab Futurism and Speculative Fiction, she imagines her ancestors as the inventors of the glass blowpipe (circa 50 BCE, Syro-Palestine), believing her path as a glassmaker was fated. Her earliest memory of glass’s cosmic magic came when witnessing sunlight pass through a glass of water, an apparition of shadow and light. This moment marked the beginning of her understanding of glass as an optical lens capable of revealing realities just beyond one’s view. Her work often employs lenses and two-way mirrors investigating (in)visibility as a political act. Shaped by her diasporic perspective, her work explores “double vision,” addressing themes of home, impermanence, precarity, and surveillance.
Image: Kris Rumman, Local, Walk (detail), 2020. Sumac, fennel, cumin, turmeric, paprika sand marked by audience. 10 x 15ft. Image courtesy of the artist.