Printmakers for Disability Justice

Curated by Brett Taylor

Kat Chudy

About the Artist

Kat Chudy is a multimedia artist living and working in Tallahassee, Florida. Kat graduated from Florida State University with an MFA in studio art and teaches printmaking at Thomasville Center for the Arts in Thomasville, Georgia. Chudy participates yearly in the Southeastern College Art Conference, chairing panels and presenting research on access and disability aesthetics. Their work is shown both in disabled shows and venues, as well as mainstream exhibitions, something they believe is critical to help bring disability culture to mainstream understanding as part of the larger picture of the human experience.

Artist Statement

Printmaking is the bedrock of my artistic practice, being an efficient way to work out formal problems and iterate before bringing the ideas into fiber or sculptural form. Signifiers of illness become beautiful installations or prints either through conceptual or physical transformation. My sculptural and fiber work uses found, used, or discarded items as a base – something that mirrors the need to make do with what is available and strives towards efficiency, an ethos of recycling, and a reduction of waste. Through visual rhythms scar tissue can become a beautiful texture, numbers a brutalist design, and old clothes can gain new life as flamboyant costumes. Repetition and accumulation in my work comes from finding parallels between my collecting and the way in which medical histories are collected by institutions and individuals. My own collections form a strong research base for my material studies, and I also seek points in the community to collect detritus from others.

 

Artist:

Kat Chudy
Photo of artist Kat Chudy

Social media: 

@kat_chudy

Website: www.katherinechudyart.com

Exhibition

Printmakers for Disability Justice

A stylized depiction of upside-down lungs is printed on a blue medical gown.

Alcian Blue
Relief printed etching plate on medical gown
12″x9″
2024

A winged serpent staff (caduceus) with a white cross on red field patch sits in the center of a frame of white lines on a red ground that look like bronchial tubes

Prayers For the Pandemic
Vinyl, thread, cotton, relief print on cotton, patch
13.5”x10.5″
2024

A netting pattern in the shape of upside down lungs printed in black sits in a gritty gray ground

Lifelong Customer
Vinyl stencil etching
6″x5.75″
2024

Red biomorphic forms float among a mass of lung-like cells in gray

Fulguration
Stone lithography on Stonehenge with chine collé
20″x14″
2023

An intense mass of cell-like forms fill a square composition

Osteophytes
Intaglio on Rives BFK
12” x 12”
2024

A sculpture of a standing figure covered with layers of red fabric hols a long red flag that piles on the floor.

The Bravest Coward
Red fabric, mannequin, wood, monofilament, thread
12′ x 10′ x 10′
2024

Rows of dozens of accessibility car placards hang with varied messages.

Rites of Passage: Microaggression
Screenprint, Sharpie, and pins on Stonehenge

A vest-like garment hangs splayed out on the wall from a small pole. The red vest is covered with layers of triangles in varied sizes and patterns.

The Signs Were All There
Screenprint and etching on cotton and medical gown, thread
24″ x 53″
2024

Layers of red triangles like pennants sit on a ground of gold cell structures.

Infamy I
Collagraph, screenprint
19″x12.5″
2023

Forceps and medical scissors with cell form handles converge on the center of this composition.

Wheel of Fortune II
Etching on Rives BFK
12″x5″
2024