Kat Chudy
College of Fine Arts Studio Art (MFA)
Infamy I
I write and run a podcast called DIY Access that focuses on novel solutions to longstanding issues of inaccessibility. My art practice finds beautiful and dignified ways to show the invisible parts of being disabled. The work spans many mediums, including printmaking, photography, painting, and fiber art—most of the pieces end up in conversation with one another when installed. Each medium is just as important as the idea being put into it, the form being another facet of communication that holds its own meaning. Democratic means of production are heavily favored, showing both the industrial application to the individual and how this mechanical reproduction can serve our liberation.
My work uses repetition and accumulation to embellish and 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, or the act of creation can connect to an act of care through its circadian rhythms. The visual presence of a repeated act becomes a material object of history, a physical representation of effort, focus, and resources. Both the materials used and the manner in which they are manipulated become the vehicle through which I make the invisible visible. My personal symbolic lexicon evolved naturally through the creation of several key pieces, being more a collection of material manipulation techniques than a set of visual symbols. 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 transformation of the materials into the correctly balanced embodiment of my experience, becomes an experience in and of itself. The meditative state that emerges from these repetitive acts recontextualizes my disability.
Artwork Description:
This piece layers red silkscreen photo images of cloth flags with the same flags sealed in PVA and printed as relief images on top of a background of gold bones. The flags and bones are both symbols of trauma and the bad behaviors that come from the root of unresolved past. Both are reminders, the artifacts of skeletons in the closet thought long gone.