Karen Kraven

Karen Kraven

Biography

Karen Kraven’s work facilitates unexpected encounters between textiles, sculpture, and images, be they uncanny resemblances or misleading juxtapositions. Informed by labour, sport, textile arts, and optical illusion, Kraven’s work investigates the registers of the body– how it is fragmented, unstable, and under constant interrogation. The artist exploits the illusion and seduction found in such pursuits to disguise and distort the body’s appearance–or disappearance–whether obscured, sexualized, or beguiled. Shifting and mutating, her works collapse upon one another, mesmerising us as they reappear enlarged, divided, and flattened. Kraven’s work with textiles is influenced by her family’s knitting factory that stopped manufacturing the year she was born.

Karen Kraven is currently based in Montreal, Quebec, and holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University (Montreal). Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Axenéo7 (Gatineau), Latitude 53 (Edmonton), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland), the Darling Foundry (Montreal), and Mercer Union (Toronto). Recent group exhibitions include the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum (Montreal), Triangle – Astérides (Marseille), and Clint Roenisch Gallery (Toronto).

Born in London, ON

Lives and works in Montreal, QC