MFA Candidate Spotlight: Kat Chudy
Kat Chudy (they/them) is a disabled queer American artist currently living and working in Tallahassee, Florida. They grew up the child of military parents, traveling extensively throughout the United States during their childhood and continuing to travel frequently whenever they can. They have an extensive educational background in both art and science and seek to find the edge where the two disciplines meet and inform one another through the subject of their work – invisible disability. They have won numerous awards, including second place and honorable mention at the SECAC annual juried exhibition and Best in Show at the Turner Annual ‘Spring Into Art’ show. Chudy participates yearly in SECAC – the Southeastern College Art Conference, chairing panels and presenting research on access and disability aesthetics. They engage in a practice of platform and culture building through their podcast, DIY Access, and knowledge-sharing base, the Access Rhizome. Chudy is an advocate for disability rights, healthcare rights, and educational reform. Their work is shown both in disabled shows and venues, as well as mainstream exhibitions, determined to help bring disability culture to the mainstream as part of the larger picture of human experience.
“My work uses repetition, accumulation, and embellishment to elevate the rituals and history of disability. The acts of stitching, beading, sewing, sculpting, printing, and collecting mirror the daily acts of disability without being literal documentation or social performance. These different processes can directly reference a type of medical care, such as sewing running parallel with suturing. It can also connect to an act of care through the rhythms created in the repetition of formal elements such as color, texture, line, contrast. The visual presence of a repeated act becomes an artifact of history, a physical representation of effort, focus, and resources. Both the materials used and how they are manipulated become the vehicle through which I make the invisible visible. My symbolic lexicon evolved naturally by creating several key pieces, through the collection of material manipulation techniques. Leaving certain threads of the fiber pieces untrimmed, decoration with masses of beads or notions, faux materials, and the repetition of forms dictate how I engage with any found object, image, or experience. The meditative state that emerges from these repetitive acts recontextualizes my disability.”
IG: @kat_chudy
Website: katherinechudyart.com