Kate Piekutowski - CV

Belonging
By Kate Piekutowski

…“Their polish identity emerged both amplified and distorted in the spaces of exile, a process that principally engaged the notion of hybridity”

George  Z. Gasyna
Polish, Hybrid, and otherwise: Exilic Discourse In Joseph Conrad and Witold Gombrowicz

Belonging is a term that can be employed infinitely. In its most generic form, it has often been associated with something or someone. However, particularly for these works, it is what defines the connection between identity and place.

 As a first-generation child of Polish Migrants, I constantly question, what does it mean to belong? These images explore the ideal of belonging, perhaps in their most honest self, and in retrospect of my Polish diasporic experience. Through this questioned identity, the work both in tonality, technique and colour, accentuate a romantic notion of cultural hybridity and the merging of past and present perspectives.

a / t e r e d s t a t e
By Kate Piekutowski

a / t e r e d s t a t e is a body of work that has developed from my most recent artist residency in Vadodara, India. It explores the chaos, the cultural displacement and a personal experience of finding identity. The title itself, acts as a double entendre, referring to the various states and editions of my printmaking process as well as altered states of mind. Through the technique of traditional etching onto steel, my work investigates a vulnerable relationship which can develop between identity and place. Is it a response to how we behave within our surroundings as well as how experience can define us. As a first- generation child of Polish migrants, I am continually fascinated by how we ‘belong’ and connect within community. Having recently moved to Melbourne, this work reflects on my own cultural experience and the concept of living between two cities. The layering in this work as well as the architectural jungle and repetition of motifs, becomes a metaphor for chaos and how the audience can ultimately navigate, dancing between foreground and background. These autobiographical landscapes ultimately attempt to connect to place, to find connection between something concrete and something intangible, as the protagonist becomes lost between worlds.