Artist Residency: Ava Katz
Through textile manipulation and pigment application, Katz creates vibrant playful objects that speak to their experience of gender.
Historically, fibre art has been deemed a woman’s craft and has been devalued in comparison to more masculinized forms of cultural production.
By adorning soft malleable forms with spikey protrusions, Katz is offering them a form of protection and bodily autonomy.
Katz' work celebrates these overlooked forms of labor and subtly resists projections of a fixed binary identity.
Drawing on the resilience and adaptability found in the queer community, Katz envisions their sculptures as living beings, evolving in response to their environment.
Ava Katz was born in 1997 in Chișinău, Moldova and they are currently living and working in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
They received their BFA from Emily Carr in 2024 and were awarded the Bill Reid Visual Arts Scholarship. Their work has been exhibited in The James Black Gallery, The Michael O’Brian Exhibitions Commons, and the Well Studios.
They have been featured in Akimbo magazine, The Georgia Straight, and interviewed for Vancouver Co-op Radio.
Find out more about Ava Katz:
Website: avakatzart.com
IG: @avakatzart