Katarina Wong


Artist’s Statement

I began this series after my father unexpectedly died in 2009. I was unable to work for several months after his death, and when I returned to my practice I was surprised to see a radical shift in the work. These paintings emerged from this personal experience of grief and loss.

Sumi ink holds a special place for me. My father and I learned traditional Chinese painting techniques together, so this medium is infused with those memories of us being beginners together.

I began by splashing sumi ink against the surface of paper or clayboard. From there, working without self-censorship, I excavated images revealed by my subconscious. They are, in a sense, DIY Rorschach tests and became ways through which I could begin to understand the impact of profound chaos – what happens to us when the existential rug is pulled out from under us.

Katarina Wong is a NYC-based visual artist and also the founder of MADE, a consultancy dedicated to helping a wider-range of collectors discover and acquire art. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including at El Museo Del Barrio in NYC, The Bronx Museum, The Fowler Museum in LA, the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden and Fundacion Canal in Madrid, Spain. Her work is in numerous private and public collections including the Scottsdale Museum of Art and the Frost Art Museum in Miami, FL.

She has received numerous awards, including the Cintas Fellowship for Cuban and Cuban-American artists and a Pollock-Krasner grant, as well as residencies at Skowhegan; Ucross Foundation; Ragdale Foundation, the Kunstlerhaus in Salzberg, Austria; and the Open Art Residency in Eretria, Greece. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland at College Park and a Master in Theological Studies (Buddhism) from the Harvard Divinity School.

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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.