Selected by Dean Sameshima, artist, Berlin
Kathryn Garcia is an LA/Ibiza-based artist. Her multifaceted practice gives me the energy and spirit of Womanhouse, the 1972 installation/performance space organised by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro. Though Kathy’s practice is centred on the feminine body, her drawings can defy classification and gender. They are figurative and abstract at the same time. The faces are obscured as their bodies stretch and show off parts that take us to realms that are unfamiliar and/or spiritual. In a time of so much societal and political anxiety across the globe, her work allows us to focus and recharge while getting lost in the symphony of colours and shapes that fade in and out of representation. Her pyramids, steel-frame sculptures that are sometimes displayed within the gallery and sometimes in nature, allow us to recharge, reorganise and heal.
Dean Sameshima Tell me about your three bodies of work: drawing, performance and sculpture/installation.
Kathryn Garcia Everything started with drawing. I began the series that I’m currently working on in 2013. When I first started this series, I referred to the drawings as megaliths. I wanted them to be large, towering embodiments of feminine energy. A few years later I ended up on the island of Menorca, where there are tons of megalithic sites associated with matrifocal cultures. To this day I feel that the drawings drew me to the Balearic Islands. Around the same time that I started the drawings I made a copper pyramid to meditate inside of. I was then asked to guide a meditation as part of a feminist performance exhibition using the pyramid, so I made a larger pyramid that could fit more people. After that I started to make smaller geometric objects that I placed out in nature to harness energy at places on the earth where ley lines meet – ‘energetic vortexes’. I started to take pictures to document the sculptures in situ and then I started to use my body as a way of interacting with the sculptures. At first I thought this was how I could show an audience the kind of mystical use-value of objects. I didn’t want to make lifeless objects. Then the performances evolved from documentation into filmmaking.
DS Who or what are your top five influences?
KG Marija Gimbutas, the archaeologist who studied Palaeolithic and Neolithic cultures that centred a female deity. Lygia Clark. Jack Smith. Ana Mendieta. Feminist/Queer theory.
DS What’s next? Shows, body of work, new paintings, travel?
KG I’m currently editing the footage that I shot in Sardinia into a film, and working on a suite of new drawings. I plan to explore Sardinia some more this summer and collect more footage. Also, I have sculptures in an exhibition at the Bunker Artspace in Florida. The title of the piece is ISHTAR (2020) after the goddess Ishtar, and the show happens to be in West Palm Beach, where a certain political figure lives. It’s a perfect example of using my work to anchor the energy of the Divine Feminine. The geography couldn’t be more poignant.
Kathryn Garcia is a multimedia artist working between Los Angeles and Ibiza. Her works have been exhibited internationally, with solo shows at the Orange County Museum of Art in 2018 and Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2020.
