Nina Katchadourian

Nina Katchadourian’s photographs, collaborations with nature, drawings, collages, sculptures, sound works, and videos relay a “close observation of the overlooked elements of the everyday.” Inspired by summers spent on a small Finnish island where she still lives for a portion of the year, the artist embraces both human and non-human relationships to consider the “productive confusion” of contemporary interaction between the two. Her range of subject matter, from language and translation to maps and systems, often mirror natural phenomenon such barnacles on rocks created with rock-climbing holds or swarming ants made to look like television static. Katchadourian is perhaps most well-known for her lavatory self-portraits made whilst traveling in airplane bathrooms that mimic those of the Flemish Masters with toilet paper, neck cushions, and other nearby accessories. The artist embraces spontaneity, using her own circumstances and landscape as inspiration for her humorous, subversive works.

Katchdourian has exhibited her work at institutions including the Blanton Museum, Austin, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York, Turku Art Museum, Finland, Sculpture Center, New York, Akron Art Museum, Ohio, MassMoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, MoMA PS 1, New York, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Brooklyn Museum, New York, de Appel Museum, Amsterdam, Saatchi Gallery, London, Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Turkey, Portland Museum of Art, Oregon, and apex art, New York, among many other venues. She participated in the Armenian pavilion’s exhibition at the 2015 Venice Biennale and the Neuberger Museum’s Biennial of Public Art in 2003. The artist has also received a slew of awards and grants from institutions including Art Matters, the Pilchuck School of Glass, and New York Foundation of the Arts, to name a few.