ABOUT

Kat Bawden (she/they, b. Chicago, IL) is an artist working across photography, installation, and performance. Her practice explores the relationship of trauma, memory, and the body, incorporating image-making as a process of questioning and reconstructing reality. Trained as a dancer and singer from an early age, Kat draws on the body as an expressive medium of its own. Playfully and rhythmically, she photographs and films herself in precarious physical states, often recreating memories and dreams. Her images and videos hover between private interiority and voyeuristic gaze, activating the viewer as a participant.

Her live performances and light-based installations are natural extensions of her photographic practice. Approaching live performance as an act of image-making, Kat incorporates stillness and a quiet, tense focus. Her light-based installations attune viewers’ bodies to the physiological and emotional effects of light and space, creating somatically-immersive visual worlds. Inviting viewers into such spaces, Kat’s work asks how we can more deeply situate ourselves in our own lives and in our capacity for healing.

Kat holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was awarded the James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship. She has been an artist-in-residence with Prairie Ronde, ISSP Latvia, and Artists in Public Schools. Recent performances and exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the International Center of Photography, EXPO Chicago, the International Museum of Surgical Science, the Design Museum of Chicago, Roots & Culture, Iceberg Projects, and others.

She is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Der Grief, Lenscratch, Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times, and others. Before becoming an artist, Kat studied political philosophy and environmental science at the University of Michigan and worked as a community organizer and teacher. In 2023 she started Murmuration, an experimental art space and artist residency.

Contact: bawdenka@gmail.com // Instagram // CV