Ever scrolled past news of a humanitarian crisis while sipping your freshly frothed morning latté? Clicked on an article detailing violent war atrocities, then clicked right back to a peppy playlist or a workout video?

That disorienting split — the everyday routine colliding with global catastrophe — is exactly what Longmont artist Kenzie Sitterud explores in “Happy Sad,” their latest exhibition at the Firehouse Art Center, 667 4th Ave., Longmont. Using kinetic sculptures, video performance and sharp bursts of color, Sitterud forces viewers to confront the privilege of distraction and the weight of what we try to ignore.

On display through March 9, “Happy Sad” is a bold, conceptually layered critique of American privilege, international conflict and the cultural obsession with “staying positive” at all costs. The exhibition is the result of Sitterud’s three-month residency at Firehouse, which began the day after the 2024 election in November — a moment of collective uncertainty that seeped into the work’s direction.

Sitterud’s art, however, thrives on politics.

“In the wake of the election, I heard a lot of people’s sadness, anger and fear,” Sitterud said. “I think those emotions made their way into the work as well, but moreover, it drove my work. It made it more urgent.”

Sitterud’s work is an intersection of installation, video, sculpture and public art. For the past 20 years, they have used their practice to explore power structures, social injustices, queerness and contradiction. Sitterud’s art is bright, poppy and often unsettling, forcing viewers to reconsider the spaces they inhabit, no matter how familiar those spaces may feel.

Sitterud’s early work focused on queer dysphoria in domestic spaces, transforming familiar settings —bathrooms, wardrobes, kitchen tables — into charged installations that reflect the discomfort and tension of daily existence.

“I created a series of installations that captured that queer dysphoria, but I used high-saturation, vibrational colors to amplify the feeling,” they said. “My color choices are heavily influenced by Josef Albers’ color theory, pop artists like Warhol, and the concept of the ready-made, inspired by Marcel Duchamp.”

Over the years, Sitterud’s work has evolved, but remains deeply engaged with themes of identity, privilege and systemic critique. Their work has been exhibited at RedLine Contemporary Art Center in Denver, the Denver Art Museum and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), along with several public art installations and commissions.

“I approach every body of work by asking myself: ‘What can I learn? How can I experiment?’” Sitterud said. “I’m always looking for the metaphoric meaning within the material itself.”

For “Happy Sad,” the concept behind the exhibition came from a simple moment in parenthood. Sitterud had been teaching their 2-year-old son how to recognize emotions, repeating the phrases and expressions “happy face, sad face” over and over.

At some point, the words burrowed their way into Sitterud’s subconscious.

“I think we did it so many times that it just seeped into my dreams,” they said. “I woke up one day and just knew — the show was going to be called ‘Happy Sad.’”

But like much of their work, the phrase took on a heavier meaning. As Sitterud was developing the exhibition, they found themselves caught in that disorienting split between daily routine and global catastrophe — cycling through a Peloton workout one minute, doomscrolling war updates from Gaza and Ukraine the next.

“I’d be mid-workout, then stop and check my phone, and suddenly I’d be looking at images of bombed-out buildings,” Sitterud said. “And then I’d go right back to my ride, to some upbeat instructor telling me to push through. That duality — the privilege of distraction versus the inescapable weight of destruction — became the foundation of this show.”

At its center, “Happy Sad” is about American privilege — not just in the obvious ways, but in something even more insidious: The ability to look away.

“We haven’t seen war on our own soil since the Civil War,” Sitterud said. “That’s an immense privilege, and I started thinking about how we take it for granted.”

Rather than turning to performative activism — an Instagram post here, a GoFundMe donation there — they wanted to create something that forced a deeper reflection. The resulting body of work makes the viewer sit in that discomfort, staring directly into the absurdity of being told to “stay positive” while the world is actively crumbling.

The first thing viewers will notice when they step into “Happy Sad” is color. The entire gallery is washed in yellow — not a soft, buttery yellow, but an overwhelming, bright, drugstore shade of lemon that can’t be ignored. It radiates joy, sure, but on the other hand, the color is reminiscent of a warning — reminding the viewer, less obviously so, of caution tape, hazard lights and emergency alerts. Then the eyes adjust to the room’s centerpiece: A kinetic sculpture

of 30 Mylar happy face balloons, drifting and bobbing, with movements dictated by unseen mechanical pulleys.

“It starts out looking kind of fun, kind of playful,” Sitterud said. “But the longer you sit with it, the more unsettling it becomes.”

Alongside the kinetic installation, “Happy Sad” features video works. In one, titled “Give Me a Happy Face,” Sitterud instructs participants to shift between emotions on command: “Now, give me a happy face. Now, give me a sad face.”

The result is awkward, funny and rather disturbing.

“It’s strange watching people try to manufacture a feeling, just because they were told to,” they said. “It makes you wonder how often we do that in real life.”

In another video, Sitterud wears a pink Pussyhat and shoves it into their mouth. The Pussyhat, a pink, brimless, knit beanie, was created in large numbers for the 2017 Women’s March, a worldwide protest against Donald Trump’s first inauguration as the president of the United States.

In a separate time-lapse vide, Sitterud sits down and eats an entire gluten-free Whole Foods cake, while still wearing the hat.

Another video shows a friend methodically unraveling a handwoven pink pussy hat, thread by thread, until there’s nothing left.

A large-scale painting titled “The Wait (W-A-I-T) of the World” dominates part of the gallery wall. At 5-by-7-feet, it’s an imposing presence, layering fragmented images of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza into hard-edged geometric compositions. Nearby, clusters of concrete-filled balloons sit suspended between bricks or are scattered across the floor, their weight rendering them useless as objects of celebration. One hanging sculpture features a row of balloons morphing midair — from soft, buoyant latex into hardened concrete — descending into a pile of rubble. It’s a transformation in progress, a moment caught between states of being.

“The materials all play with contrast,” said Sitterud. “Balloons are supposed to be light, weightless, full of air — but here, they’re heavy. They’re filled with concrete. They’re breaking under the pressure.”

The entire show leans into those contradictions — joy and grief, levity and collapse, privilege and destruction — turning what initially feels playful into something nefarious and unsettling.

“Happy Sad” forces the viewer to face, and sit with, contradiction — the kind we live with every day but rarely take the time to examine. The show doesn’t tell viewers how to think or to feel, but instead, it asks us to experience the tension of forced optimism, the weight of privilege and the quiet unraveling of both.

“It’s not about guilt, necessarily,” Sitterud said. “It’s about awareness — and also the limits of that awareness. What does it mean to recognize privilege if we don’t know what to do with that information? What does it mean to care about suffering from a distance?”

Even on the most surface level, the exhibition’s visual language makes those contradictions impossible to ignore. The gradual deflation of the happy face balloons is more than just a mechanical process — it’s a slow, tangible metaphor for the broader exhaustion many people are feeling. Political exhaustion. Social exhaustion. Personal exhaustion. The slow collapse of systems that were never built to hold everyone up in the first place.

“You walk into a room full of balloons, and they’re smiling at you,” said Sitterud. “And, at first, it’s kind of funny. But after a while, it’s oppressive. You’re staring at them, they’re staring at you, and then you realize — you’re watching them lose air in real time.”

But not everything in “Happy Sad” is about collapse. Some of it is about survival.

As part of their community engagement project, Sitterud and local DJ Disco Witch are hosting an “in bed by 10” Queer Dance Party from 6-9:30 p.m. Saturday at Firehouse Art Center. Firehouse calls it an “in bed by 10” dance party.

“This is a queer dance party for the legebetequois and friends, Sitterud said in the event post. “Right now, we all need a dance break and community, even those of us with kids and early mornings.”

The event asks for a suggested donation and is open to those who are ages 18 and older.

Sitterud said this dance party will offer a space where people can gather, move and celebrate in a moment where joy feels increasingly under attack.

“I wanted to create something that wasn’t just about grief,” they said. “Right now, LGBTQ+ people are experiencing so much hate, so much government oppression. We need spaces where we can just exist. Where we can feel joy without justifying it.”

The event isn’t just a party — it’s a statement: In times of oppression, joy is its own kind of defiance.

At the end of the day, for Sitterud, “Happy Sad” isn’t about offering easy answers — it’s about creating space for reflection.

“It’s a visceral experience,” they said. “I hope people walk in and take a moment to reflect on their privilege — on the fact that we haven’t experienced war on our land for centuries. And also on how we, as Americans, are complicit in wars happening elsewhere to sustain our way of life.”

Visitors can view “Happy Sad” at Firehouse Arts Center through March 9. Learn more about Sitterud at kenziemckenzie.com and follow them on Instagram at @kenziesitterud.