Kathie Halfin
Kathie Halfin is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working in textile, installation and performance art. Halfin’s work involves labor-intensive physical processes and meditates on complex multilingual and multicultural aspects of the identity. As a Crimean, Ukrainian-born, Israeli raised based in Brooklyn, Kathie’s work incorporates family history, cross-cultural mythologies and rituals, language patterns and woven messages.
In her current practice, Halfin explores textile's ability to uphold information and act as a carrier of history, language and resistance. Halfin’s textiles contain coded messages based on material qualities of the fabric, maker’s knowledge of the process and an inquiry into a nature of language of the cloth.
While being both analytical and experimental Kathie's work encompasses processes of hand weaving, dyeing, printing as well as writing scores, working with the sound, text and code. Her final projects are composed of textiles and live interactive performances. Situated in potentiality and the storytelling, Halfin’s performances create a space to poetically unravel historical and personal threads of the cloth, its intimate and collective meaning, re-weaving the past contexts and encoding the present ones.
Halfin presented her projects and performed at the solo and group exhibitions at the Ely Center Of Contemporary Art, New Heaven, CT, Bronx Museum AIM Biennial, Bronx, NY, the A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Itinerant Performance Festival in Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, Knockdown Center: Sunday Series, Brooklyn, NY, Art In Odd Places Performance Festival, NY, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, NY, and the Immigrant Artist Biennial, NY among others.
EDUCATION
2015 MFA Fine Arts at School of Visual Arts, New York
2004 B.Des. (Textile Design), Shenkar College of Engineering and Design – Ramat Gan, Israel
RESIDENCIES AND FELLOWSHIPS
2022 Upcoming Icelandic Textile Center, Blönduós, Iceland
2022 Upcoming A-Z West, CA, Weaving Residency
2021 Cha North Artist Residency, Pine Plains, NY
2018 Wassaic Project Residency, Wassaic, NY, fully funded educational Fellowship
2016 Bronx Museum AIM Program, Bronx, NY
2015 Vermont Studio Center Residency fully funded fellowship
2015 Paula Rhodes Memorial Award- honors Master degree candidates, whose work is deemed exceptional by their chair and faculty.
2011 School Of Visual Arts (Painting/Mixed Media), Artist-in-Residence, New York
SELECTED GROUP AND SOLO SHOWS
2021 Ely Center Of Contemporary Art CT, Solo Show “The Web Of Magic and Mundane”
2020 Bronx River Center, NY, online group exhibition, short film “Uprooted”
2019 Satellite Art Show NY, Performance Is Alive, Solo Performance "Labor Of Love"
2019 NARS Foundation NY, group exhibition “The Weight Of Temporary” Video Performance "Flossing Time"
2019 Immigrant Artist Biennial, presented at Assembly Room, NY, Solo Performance "The Labor Of Love"
2019 Itinerant Performance Festival 2019, Smack Mellon NY, Solo Performance "Live Through It"
2018 Knockdown Center NY: Sunday Series, Live Multimedia performance “Matter In Flux”
2018 Art In Odd Places 2018 BODY Performance Festival, Live Multimedia Performance “Hell Hath No Fury”
2018 Borders Space NY, Live Performance “Vortical Bodies In The Nomad Space”
2018 Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center NY, Boremix Festival, group exhibition “The Body”
2017 Periphery Space, Providence RI, Uproot Exhibition, Live Multimedia Performance “Goya”
2017 NARS Foundation of Arts NY, “Discrete Prehension” Multimedia Installation
2017 AIM Biennial 2017, Bronx Museum NY, Multimedia Installation “0 Gravity”
2016 Central Booking Art Space NY, Video projection “The Voice”
2016 A.I.R Gallery, NY group show “Do You Hear What I Hear?, multimedia installation "Thresholds"
2016 School Of Visual Arts, MFA Thesis show, Brooklyn, NY
2016 “New York-New Work” MFA Biennial, NY, Multimedia installation "0 Gravity"
2014 School Of Visual Arts, NY, Gramercy Gallery exhibition “Boundaries”
SELECTED CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2021 Dappled Things, Academy Of St. Joseph, NY, Two person show by Katherine Earle and Defne Tutus, curated by Kathie Halfin
2021 Satellite Art Show, Brooklyn, NY, Re:Live Performance Art Series, co-curated with Fang Yu Liu
2020 Traces Of Life, Group Exhibition and online performance art event, co-curated with Fang Yu Liu, The Hive Art Community, Brooklyn
2019 The Syncope, Group Exhibition, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY, Curated by Kathie Halfin