Hallows Betwixt by Kel Mur in Powder Room Gallery

Hallows Betwixt by Kel Mur
in the Powder Room Gallery
at River Arts on Water | 590 Water St, Prairie du Sac, WI 53578
Exhibit dates: May 9 – August 2 2025

Art Reception: Thursday, May 29, 5:30-7:30p, also celebrating this season’s Featured Artists, Georiga Weithe and Laura Annis

The Vulva Shrine series has been a part of Kel Mur’s art practice that they return to periodically. This work consists of assemblages constructed within the anatomical blueprint of the vulva and contemplates stereotypes, emotions, and ideas related to this body part. Each piece tells a story through a variety of found objects and detritus that can be funny, haunting, ironic, or beautiful, exploring the contrast between the subject that inspires it and the materiality of the piece. Using discarded industrial and mass-made materials, the work questions the chronic subjugation of people who have vulvas, despite how they have always contributed to and helped sustain the fabric of society. These works, therefore, become a subversive celebration of an organ designed exclusively for experiencing sexual pleasure in the body.

Pussy’s Got a Mousetrap; Wood, cat skeleton, cockroach, velvet, found objects.

Artist Bio:

Kel Mur (she/they) grew up in New Jersey and graduated Cum Laude with a BA in Fine Art from Monmouth University in 2011, where she received the Creativity in Studio Art Award for her senior honors thesis, Commodity. After her undergraduate studies, she relocated to New Orleans to develop her studio practice before relocating to Madison, Wisconsin, to pursue an MFA. Kel Mur has exhibited throughout the Midwest, Southeast, and Northeast, showing work concerned primarily with the body exploring its various tribulations, including grief and the chronic subjugation of the femme-presenting form. Kel Mur has had artwork published in BARED: Contemporary Poetry and Art on Bras and Breasts (La Femmes Folles, 2016), HOOT Online Magazine (November 2013, Issue 25), Sweetbitter by poet Stacey Balkun (Sundress Publications, 2022), and AJS Perspectives the Magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies (Winter 2023). Kel Mur earned her MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Spring of 2020. She resides in Madison, WI, where she was recognized as one of the Madison Bridge Work Emerging Artists (2020-21) through the Arts + Literature Laboratory. She also nurtures a curatorial practice as the current Exhibitions and Education Manager for River Arts, Inc. in Prairie du Sac, WI, where she programs their multiple gallery spaces and educational workshops. kelmur.com