To Kat Kinnick, feminine rage is “The strength that stands before harm and injustice and says ‘No more:’ No more poor decision making, no more destructive, catastrophic, trauma inflicting, warmongering, violating actions.”Her upcoming show, A Benevolent Force, explores this concept through a body of paintings on paper and panel. She poses the question, “What arises to meet the people in power who violate our collective safety by causing climate change, genocide and war?” And her answers take the forms of creatures who, to her, illustrate that force: snarling black wolves, wise animals and dark and devilish gods which she calls “faces of the natural feminine that step in to block the blow of the perpetrator.”
Kinnick’s aesthetic and narrative starting point for the show was Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 film, Princess Mononoke. In the film, the harmony that humans, animals and gods have enjoyed is disintegrating. Kinnick recalls an image from the movie that shows Princess Mononoke riding on a huge, fierce wolf, wearing a “sharp, determined look of feminine rage.”
The idea speaks to our present position in the face of mounting existential threats, Kinnick says:
In this time there is so much heaviness and bleakness in the world. We’re confronted daily with the awful reality of the continually unfolding climate crisis, with mass ecological and cultural extinctions, with genocide funded by our government, with the prospects that AI may multiply our already unbearable disempowerment and alienation, with capitalism that entrusts the 1% with our most important decisions, with patriarchy that condones men’s violation of boundaries and consent, with white supremacy that supports a rising tide of fascism that is celebrated instead of criminalized… this information age which offered so much possibility and promise in the beginning is becoming a full-fledged dystopia before our eyes.
Kinnick confronts this darkness with characteristic tenderness and acute observation, but also a gathering strength. The animals she depicts are vulnerable, but still a force of reckoning: “Some of them are there and not there at the same time, half-disappearing, with one foot in the spirit realm of extinction—that kind of presence is an omen, a language of its own, that can counsel us for our own survival,” Kinnick says.
She’s drawn to the imagery of folk art and myth, both ancient and contemporary, to channel the wildness she embraces. “In each generation our stories and art create narratives that make that force more relatable, and in the process, channel its wild flow into our human lives,” Kinnick says. Through this work, artists and storytellers develop avenues of connection that have the power to unite people in community with one another.
Among the show’s paintings will be Kinnick’s illustrations of select folk tales about bees, which she created as a collaboration with German writer Iris de Maaß, who has been collecting these tales for years. “I really connected with the stories,” Kinnick says. “I love the format of children’s book illustration and this bee series is a great opportunity for me to process some of my favorite styles through my own voice.”
Kinnick drew on a breadth of additional cultural references in creating the show, including the movie Mulan, images of Flamenco dancers “who carry strength and simultaneous suffering in their gestures,” the Mountain Goats album Bleed Out, which reminds Kinnick of “A hidden, underestimated force to be reckoned with,” the power and adrenaline of heavy metal, Guillermo Del Toro’s creatures in Pan’s Labyrinth and Pinnochio, and Balkan choral music, among others. To Kinnick, these represent a sense of complex, nuanced power that transcends binaries of good and evil.
“Overall,” she says, “this show for me is a reflection of empathy and reverent rebelliousness—of values that I want to see leading us into the future.”
A Benevolent Force
solo exhibition
May 3 - June 3, 2024
Hecho A Mano
129 W Palace Ave, Santa Fe, NM
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things
May 10, 2024 - December 27, 2024
Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum, 750 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Contemporary artists such as Guadalupe Hernandez, Terran Last Gun, Arthur Lopez, and Lisa Trujillo are paired with historic pieces from the collection to challenge the viewers’ experience with beauty by unveiling the complicated story that accompanies it.
This exhibition features Wildfire Season in the Southwest by Kat Kinnick
Wildfire Season in the Southwest emerged out of a response to the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire of Early April through late June 2022, the largest and most destructive wildfire in modern New Mexico history which burned 341,471 acres in the southern Sangre de Cristo Mountains in San Miguel, Mora & Taos counties, and destroyed almost 1,000 structures including homes and threatening 12,000 more. The Spring of 2022 was one of the warmest and driest, as the megadrought in the American Southwest intensified.
On August 21st, it was announced that the fire was a hundred percent contained. The news was celebrated, though the aftereffects of the fire continue to be devastating. After the dry spell came the incessant monsoon rains unleashing deadly flash floods. New Mexico’s state historian, Rob Martinez, said, “The Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire burned down a way of life that’s lasted hundreds of years.”
Sophisticated Tenderness
solo exhibition
Sept 29 - Oct 23, 2023
Hecho A Mano, 830 Canyon Road, Santa Fe
“Our greatest threat is indifference,” says painter, illustrator, printmaker and ceramicist Kat Kinnick. “Gentleness and cooperation are guides, whether it be protecting the water and wild animals, raising a family, or the softness inside of ourselves and our closest loved ones.” This theme of tenderness and care informed Kinnick’s upcoming show at Hecho a Mano. Her prints and oil paintings feature animals—many of them young and vulnerable—and people in gestures of surrender to the inevitability of nature. “The prints are centered around letting yourself love, and letting go—loving despite the potential loss and risk,” Kinnick says. “They’re also about celebrating cuteness, tenderness and beauty in nature, and likewise, inside ourselves.”
Some of the prints illustrate figures and events from the artist’s life. One print, called Says Phoebe, shows birds that built a nest on her porch. Another depicts a girl crying in the rain, which Kinnick says “is based on a moment when I felt at a loss and the weight of the world was too much and I sat outside in a lightning storm and let myself be drenched by the rain.” The show will also include functional ceramics and ceramic sculptures: a first for Kinnick’s exhibitions. She studied interdisciplinary sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, exploring mediums from bronze casting, to woodworking, to weaving. She describes the process of sculpting animals for her new show as a tactile understanding: “It’s been such an exciting process of discovery, and also a new relationship to the forms—I get to touch, hug and hold them.” Her subjects, the plants and animals of northern New Mexico, are familiar to her.“ As an artist, there’s solidarity in the fact that animals and land don’t use verbal language to communicate, and we have to be patient and gentle to hear them,” Kinnick says. “My art creates a world where animals are reflections of our inner landscape.” To Kinnick, tenderness means nurturing a relationship to other beings—and to yourself—that “softens, awakens, pays attention to and is curious… it’s one of the most sophisticated, grounded qualities,” she says. “The presence of nature offers clarity. Nature tells us who we are, and asks us to take these gems we’ve found inside ourselves to share with the world. Each person has the capacity to find different gems.”
Kinnick’s part-time job restoring Navajo rugs informs her understanding of color. “I have to mix yarns together to match the colors in the rugs in the spots I’m re-weaving, and the practice has really inspired a heightened color sensitivity,” she says. The themes Kinnick has explored in her past shows at Hecho a Mano, Abundance/Impermanence and A Culture of Wilderness, are still relevant to her work, but now, she’s more keenly focused on relationships than individual beings. “I’ve always been a fan of dualities and complements: loss and love, cute and fierce, harmony and dissonance. As an artist, it’s my world—I can create whatever and whoever I want, the energies and personalities, and the stories I long for.” Her new exhibition is inspired by the strength it takes to be sensitive. “The animals look at you, you are seen by them, and they ask you to, likewise, see them,” Kinnick says. “The world is asking for you to listen, and each of our wild, timeless souls inside of us are asking us to listen.” Sophisticated Tenderness will open at Hecho a Mano on Friday, September 29, and will be on view through October 23.
Heliotropism: Turning Toward the Light
Sept 28 - Nov 26, 2023
Lapis Room, 303 Romero street, Old Town Albuquerque NM
A select group of Southwest’s best let their work be permeated by the idea of Heliotropism: a phenomenon that plants and animals move toward the light of the sun throughout the day. More remarkably, when the sun is tucked deep within the clouds, the sun-seeking beings often look toward each other for light.
Abundance/Impermanence
solo exhibition
July 1 - July 31, 2022
Hecho Gallery, 129 W. Palace Ave
Kinship, dreaming, unearthing, wisdom, listening, timelessness: Kat Kinnick held these themes in mind while creating the paintings in her new solo exhibition, Abundance / Impermanence, which depicts the plants and animals of New Mexico. Her paintings are composed of gouache on paper, which Kinnick sees as an immediate medium, able to capture fleeting encounters, ethereal moments, and ways of existing rich with beauty.
Kinnick grew up in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, and moved to Baltimore where she received a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She was drawn back to New Mexico by her love of the landscape and wilderness. In this show, she used the pastel pinks and yellows of the earth, the deep purples and blues of the mountains, and the sage greens that tint the plants here in New Mexico. She is inspired by the beauty and austerity of the state’s ecology: “The hardcore/punk spikey tenacious nature of the plants,” she says.
“The paintings emerge from a love of wildlife and craft, and a reverence for the natural world,” Kinnick shares. “The work is hoping to inspire the viewer to approach nature with a curiosity, a sense of abundant beauty and feeling of being at home and belonging with nature.” Kinnick sees art as a way for humans to participate in what animals and plants experience naturally: “Quieting the mind, noticing connections that you missed, and heightening your senses as you feel at home in the world. Animals and plants seem to remember and hold wisdom of the ancient, and don't forget by being distracted by newness like we are.”
Through her paintings, she accesses an imaginative process of making connections and engaging with senses that the rational, literal world cannot. Her goal in creating a painting is to find what speaks to her and create a work that resonates and sings from those elements. She revels in art that engages the audience as a massage for the soul, an invaluable experience in today’s world. “What are we going to do throughout this time of losing species, ecologies and wilderness untouched by humans?” Kinnick asks. “Poetry and art access the places we need to retrieve. I want people to have their kinship with animals and plants enhanced through my work and through the use of functional objects of craft.”
A Culture of Wilderness
solo exhibition
February 28, 2020
Hecho A Mano, 830 Canyon Rd, Santa Fe
Depicting wildlife and wilderness of the high desert of New Mexico, Kat Kinnick works to create a culture of fondness & connectedness to our natural world. The artist says, “creating culture through art is like creating a value system. My work represents my heart and my values. I feel that if we paid better attention to our wild plants and animals, and were more connected to them, then we’d live in a healthier world.”
MIRROR BOX | Strangers Collective
February 23 - April 14, 2018
Form & Concept Gallery, 435 S Guadalupe St, Santa Fe, NM
Kyle Farrell, Alex Gill and Jordan Eddy, co-directors of Strangers Collective and the No Land art space, curate this exhibition of emerging artists and writers at form & concept. The show engages a network of early career creatives, anchored in Santa Fe and spiraling across the nation. Its curatorial throughline presents a radical method for reflecting on place and identity through art objects.
The term “mirror box” originates in the medical field: Vilayanur S. Ramachandran invented the box with two back-to-back mirrors in the center to help amputees manage phantom limb pain. The patient places the “good” limb into one side, and the “residual” limb into the other, making mirrored movements that can trick the brain into believing that it’s moving the phantom limb. “It’s a tribute to the incredible power of grey matter,” says Eddy. “If our minds are capable of conjuring a nervous system from thin air, can we link up with people, places or things in the same visceral but invisible way?” The curatorial team realized that art, like the mirror box, can act as a conduit for this type of transcendent—but also highly tangible—experience.
“As we turned over the idea of a ‘mirror box’ in conversation, its meaning evolved to represent a sort of theoretical art object,” says Farrell. “If you imagine a cube made from mirrors floating in a landscape, it reflects you and your surroundings across six different planes. By peering into it, you begin view identity and place in novel ways.” The show’s participants interact with the world in a similar fashion, reflecting, filtering and distorting their varied contexts to create visions of the world that are requisitely imbued with their own experiences.
Ruminations & Remnants
A pop-up exhibition of illustrations & prints by Kat Kinnick & Zahra Marwan
July 22 - August 6, 2017
NO LAND Gallery, 54 1/2 E San Francisco St #7, Santa Fe, NM
Kat Kinnick and Zahra Marwan met just a few months ago, and exhibited together for the first time in late June. The joint show was in a red barn at the Rio Grande Community Farm in Albuquerque, with illustrations and prints hanging from the rafters and pinned to alfalfa bales. In a new version of the pop-up exhibition, Kinnick and Marwan travel from the humble farm to a gallery on the Santa Fe Plaza. Though they’ve landed in a more traditional art venue, the artists maintain a down-to-earth philosophy about their work. Both of them blend natural imagery with personal narratives, seeking to connect with diverse audiences. Ruminations & Remnants opens at Strangers Collective’s No Land on Saturday, July 22 from 6-9 pm. The show’s closing reception on Sunday, August 6 features Albuquerque acoustic trio Lone Piñon.
“It started at the farmer’s market,” says Kinnick. That’s where Marwan sells her illustrations, and Kinnick’s partner Jordan Wax sometimes performs with his band Lone Piñon. “Zahra saw an album cover I designed for Lone Piñon, and reached out to me to do a show,” Kinnick recalls. “She told me that she makes art as her living. I was like, ‘How does this person do this?’” They became fast friends, and have supported each other in their early careers as professional artists.“Kat calls herself an ‘in the closet’ artist, but since we did the last show she’s been making a lot more work,” says Marwan. “She’s inspired me a lot in so many ways as well.”
Kinnick grew up in Albuquerque, and her parents restore Navajo rugs. She studied art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Even in her time away from the high desert, she made paintings of New Mexico’s flora and fauna. Now living in Santa Fe, she continues to depict the natural world with the intention of bringing viewers back in touch with the wild. She works in watercolor and gouache to bring plants and animals to life on paper and board. “Creating culture is like creating a value system,” she says. “My work represents my heart and my values. I feel like if we knew animals and plants better, and were more connected to them, then we’d live in a healthier world.”
Marwan was born in Kuwait, and moved to Albuquerque with her family when she was a child. Now an American citizen, she has traveled back and forth several times in the past few years to visit family. Her watercolor-and-ink illustrations capture everyday moments in both places, highlighting differences and similarities between the two cultures that Marwan moves between. Other drawings feature charming portraits of her friends, or scenes from her travels across the world. “I search for certain things that I remember, and invent things as well,” Marwan says. “I blend together real experiences with things that I imagine. Drawing helps gets these things out.”
When it comes to selling their work, both artists prioritize accessibility. “At the market, some people are like, ‘You shouldn’t be selling your art at a place like this!’” Marwan says. “I’m like, ‘Why can’t it be sold like tomatoes?’”
At the show’s closing reception on Sunday, August 6, Lone Piñon—who helped connect Kinnick and Marwan—will provide music. The group has revived and updated the Chicano stringband style that once flourished in New Mexico, bringing a devoted and explosive musicianship to Northern New Mexican polkas and chotes, virtuosic Mexican huapango and son calentano, and classic borderlands conjunto. Jordan Wax, Greg Glassman and Noah Martinez are the band’s members.