Simone Klein tends to live (and more) in Providence, RI. Klein researches embodiment through multiple mediums and shapes of relationship. As an artist, they create poetry, sculpture, digital images, and facilitation that rely on the complexities of connection, survival, divinity, and body. They recently graduated with Honors from Brown University, concentrating in Modern Culture & Media, while nourishing side interests in economics, public health, and physics. Klein was a 2023-24 Royce Fellow, a US Figure Skating Moves in The Field Gold Medalist, recently performed at the American College Dance Association Conference and The Lindemann Spring Festival of Dance, and has received many grants for their work. Klein loves to learn strangely, and read the acknowledgments section first.
Artist Statement
I work from and in the contexts of improvisation, political-ed, and cultural critique. My research centers on questions about interdependence, disorder, and transformation.
I am interested in ritual as a social mechanic, and ritual process as a mode of utility. I am curious about the possible misuse of spiritual potency. I aim to create questions that critique the paradigm they create – such as, “what’s the best way to keep something?” or “what do we fear about embodiment in ritual?” In its enactment of inheritances, my work wonders how to speak to the future or speak a future into being with language collected through past.
Sculpture
This work was recently shown at the SCALE Issue No.01 Release Party Exhibition, In the Bayard Ewing Gallery on RISD’s campus.
Manicured Chanting Spot, 2025
car part, acrylic paint, oil pastel, spray paint.
cube, grid, switchboard, map, congregation, inside, out-loud.
Bed, 2022.
5ft x 8ft x 6ft
dirt placed onto bed as part of performance
Untitled lamp, 2022, 2ft x 1ft x 8in
Queer Mechitza, “Tell Me What You Know About Dismemberment.” *after Bhanu Kapil
projection, heirloom english-hebrew dictionary quilt, pen, zine. Initially show in Brown Hillel 2022.
The space was open for folks to sit down on either side, experience the mechitza, and listen to the audio.
What is a Mechitza?
Orthodox Jewish prayer practices enforce gender separation, often through the use of a divider called a mechitza, reflecting interpretations of modesty and religious roles.
Sukkot
6ft x 5ft x 6ft
video installation and group score
How the body can distort or disorient itself to regain a sense of connectedness after dissociation or crisis? What are the consequences of transformational tendencies? I am exploring the poetics of survival: sickness and recovery, fragmentation and absolute form. Water connects the pieces to the Jewish ritual, Mikvah. The Mikvah submersion supports moments of transition, healing and/or holy preparation after a menstrual period. My desire was to acknowledge the ancient and vast capacity of water to process, cradle, destroy, and churn.
Warm Thing, 2024.
“This book is a compilation of cyanotype prints - contours of dancers in motion - and somatic invitations drawn from the language of light, and movement courses with Shura Baryshnikov. These invitations come from a method of poetic queuing used in dance research to locate new kinesthetic textures. The work is interested in translations between body, light and text.”
“This book is a compilation of cyanotype prints - contours of dancers in motion - and somatic invitations drawn from the language of light, and movement courses with Shura Baryshnikov. These invitations come from a method of poetic queuing used in dance research to locate new kinesthetic textures. The work is interested in translations between body, light and text.”
CLAY,
risograph poetry zine, 2024.
Folding zine made on a found Free Palestine poster.
Part of a practice during April 2024 to make a zine every day.
Additional April 2024 daily practice zines.