Nina Katchadourian: Curiouser

This mid-career survey will present approximately ten major bodies of work by Brooklyn-based artist Nina Katchadourian. The exhibition will feature photography, video, sculpture, sound art, and performance, and will be accompanied by the first substantial catalogue devoted to her career. Highlights include selections from the artist’s ongoing “Seat Assignment” project—photographs and videos made on airplane flights using her mobile phone—and Accent Elimination, her acclaimed 2005 video about her complex family heritage, exhibited in the 2015 Venice Biennale and recently acquired by the Blanton. 

In Katchadourian’s own words, her work reveals the creative potential that “lurks within the mundane” and underscores the remarkable freedom and productivity that can come from working within limitations. Using ingenuity and humor, her work encourages us to rethink a wide range of assumptions, from our capacity for curiosity and creativity to our place in an increasingly global world.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Whether you go or not, Nina Katchadourian: Curiouser, reveals the artist's humor, ingenuity, and ability to unearth the creative potential in everyday things. The diverse range of art it highlights includes Mended Spiderwebs, a series of photographs documenting the artist's attempts to weave red string into dilapidated spiderwebs, and Under Pressure, a recent video that Katchadourian took of herself lip-synching to David Bowie and Freddy Mercury's duet using her mobile phone in the cramped quarters of an airplane lavatory. We learn about art projects she has made with the assistance not only of arachnids and rock stars, but also United Nations translators, birdcall experts, librarians, sports announcers, parking lot attendants, an accent elimination coach, and even her own parents.

This exhibition catalogue marks the first significant publication on Katchadourian's work and features essays by Jeffrey Kastner and Veronica Roberts, as well as an interview between the artist and Stuart Horodner. In addition, it includes Katchadourian's accounts of fourteen individual works paired with creative essays from a multidisciplinary team of contributors including artist Ann Hamilton, animal behavior expert Laurel Braitman, and sound art scholar Christoph Cox. Through these diverse perspectives, readers are introduced to Katchadourian's unbridled curiosity and puckish wit.