Katherine Guinness
is a theorist and historian of contemporary art. She is Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in the Department of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, she was Assistant Professor and Director of Art History at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS), where she also served as the academic director of the downtown Gallery of Contemporary Art (or GOCA). She received her PhD from the University of Manchester and is the author of the first academic monograph on German artist Rosemarie Trockel, Schizogenesis, which was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2019, and is co-author of The Influencer Factory: A Marxist Theory of Corporate Personhood on YouTube, which was published by Stanford University Press in 2024. She has been a guest editor for Art Journal Open and is the co-founder of FEARS, the Female Emerging Artist Residency Series, at UCCS.
Katherine has taught in a wide range of departments and programs across the globe, including the University of Sydney (where she taught a class in “Digital Arts” in their Digital Cultures program), the University of New South Wales (where she taught Architectural History), North Carolina State University (where she taught in their Art History and Women’s and Gender Studies programs), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (where she taught a number of First Year Seminars in Art History). She is interested in many topics within contemporary art, all of which she examines with a feminist lens, and is currently working on projects that include: the relation between anesthetics and the history of aesthetic theory; “zaniness” in contemporary Australian performance and video art; death, immortality and digital media in the work of a number of younger video artists; and a project on the political economy and visual culture of social media influencers.
The above image is a meme by @cyborg.asm on Instagram, referencing the article “Do You Really Want to Live Forever,” which was coauthored with Grant Bollmer. The original meme can be found here and the article can be found here.
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FEARS: FEMALE EMERGING ARTISTS RESIDENCY SERIES
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The Female Emerging Artists Residency Series was co-founded and is co-curated by Corey Drieth, Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing, UCCS Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) and Dr. Katherine Guinness, VAPA’s Director of Art History. It features emerging professional artists of merit in residence at GOCA Downtown since 2019.
Below are the shows that Katherine curated and co-curated as part of FEARS.
Below are the shows that Katherine curated and co-curated as part of FEARS.
Kimberly English, touch-and-go
February 5 - March 19, 2021
More information about this residency can be found online at GOCA Digital.
Kimberly English’s website can be found here.
touch-and-go is a collection of contemporary fibers interrogating the evolving notion of "women’s work” in a globalized society. As the title of the exhibition alludes, this body of work is hinged on precarious systems, formally illustrated in the fragility of draping thread and dissolving stitches. Simultaneously temporal and ethereal, touch-and-go is made solely of manipulated and reclaimed textiles that point to the history of women’s work, its labor force, and its manifestation in public and in private spheres.
Kimberly English is a fibers artist living and working in Raleigh, North Carolina. She recently earned her MFA from UNC, and she received her BFA in Fibers as a Distinguished Scholar from Savannah College of Art and Design.
Her work explores themes central to the history of women’s work, its labor force, and the local impact of a global economy – primarily through found textiles.
Kimberly English is a fibers artist living and working in Raleigh, North Carolina. She recently earned her MFA from UNC, and she received her BFA in Fibers as a Distinguished Scholar from Savannah College of Art and Design.
Her work explores themes central to the history of women’s work, its labor force, and the local impact of a global economy – primarily through found textiles.
Watch the artist provide a walkthrough of touch-and-go:
Kimberly English delivering a talk about this show, along with Katherine interviewing her about her work and this show, can be found on the Media page.
Sara Z. Meghdari, Silent Self and in the U.S.
December 11, 2020 - February 15, 2021
Above: Sara Z. Meghdari, Silent Self, 2014.
More information about this residency can be found online at GOCA Digital.
Sara Z. Meghdari’s website can be found here.
More information about this residency can be found online at GOCA Digital.
Sara Z. Meghdari’s website can be found here.
Sara Z. Meghdari is an Iranian-American Interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Meghdari holds a MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts and a B.A in Communication from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.
She has been twice awarded the Alice Beck-Odette Scholarship Award as well as the Thomas Reiss Memorial Award and is an alumna of the Engaging Artists Residency Program with the More-Art Organization. Meghdari has performed at Chinatown Soup Gallery (2019) and her work has been shown at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center (2018), the 10th Annual Governors Island Art Fair (2017) and the Queens Museum of Art (2016), among others.
“Silent Self” plays on a loop and is shown on a 32” screen that is vertically installed onto a wall. In a single shot, while wearing the Hijab and directly facing the camera, the figure slowly and consciously transitions through a series of emotions in an attempt to counter the commonly negative rhetoric and representation of Muslim women in news and media in the United States.
Screened at GOCA Downtown
December 11, 2020 - January 8, 2021
(1:47 Runtime)
She has been twice awarded the Alice Beck-Odette Scholarship Award as well as the Thomas Reiss Memorial Award and is an alumna of the Engaging Artists Residency Program with the More-Art Organization. Meghdari has performed at Chinatown Soup Gallery (2019) and her work has been shown at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center (2018), the 10th Annual Governors Island Art Fair (2017) and the Queens Museum of Art (2016), among others.
“Silent Self” plays on a loop and is shown on a 32” screen that is vertically installed onto a wall. In a single shot, while wearing the Hijab and directly facing the camera, the figure slowly and consciously transitions through a series of emotions in an attempt to counter the commonly negative rhetoric and representation of Muslim women in news and media in the United States.
Screened at GOCA Downtown
December 11, 2020 - January 8, 2021
(1:47 Runtime)
Katherine interviewing Sara Z. Meghdari about her work and this show can be found on the Media page.
Danielle Rae Miller, Sacrum
September 24 - December 4, 2020
More information about this residency can be found online at GOCA Digital.
Danielle Rae Miller’s website can be found here.
Danielle Rae Miller received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her MFA from the University of New Mexico. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, and is included in public and private collections, including the State of New Mexico’s Art in Public Places Program, The City of Albuquerque’s 1% for the Arts Public Art Collection, and the Arjo Wiggins Paper Corporation. Miller teaches at CNM Community College and the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Danielle Rae Miller’s works are dense compositions of plant, animal, and insect life realistically drawn with fine line ink on both sides of translucent vellum to create transparency, depth, and interaction between elements. Miller uses images with pre-attached meanings in our human mythologies—snakes, bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, beetles, roses, sunflowers, the human heart, ribcage, Daand pelvis—to engage an emotional response in viewers, to gently nudge individual and cultural memories, and hint at broader connections between all forms of life on this planet.
Danielle Rae Miller’s works are dense compositions of plant, animal, and insect life realistically drawn with fine line ink on both sides of translucent vellum to create transparency, depth, and interaction between elements. Miller uses images with pre-attached meanings in our human mythologies—snakes, bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, beetles, roses, sunflowers, the human heart, ribcage, Daand pelvis—to engage an emotional response in viewers, to gently nudge individual and cultural memories, and hint at broader connections between all forms of life on this planet.
Watch the artist provide an overview of Sacrum:
Katherine interviewing Danielle Rae Miller about her work and this show can be found on the Media page.
Carley Zarzeka, Wear Closed Toe Shoes and Throw Rocks to the Side
September 20 - October 20, 2019
Carley Zarzeka was the inaugural FEARS artist at UCCS. She was born in 1992 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. In 2018, she received her MFA in Studio Art at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The title of this exhibition, Wear Closed Toe Shoes and Throw Rocks to the Side, is both a command of protection and clearance, which are also two of the prominent formal themes throughout this new body of work. The exhibition includes wall-bound and freestanding assemblage sculptures built from found objects and knitting. The soft knitted forms weave, tie and uphold rackets, suet feeders, and cake pans, procuring the functionality and agency from the once used objects. The role reversal between hard and soft elements in this exhibition examines the everchanging gender roles in the domestic space and is at the center of how each component simultaneously operates in the individual work and the exhibition as a whole.
The title of this exhibition, Wear Closed Toe Shoes and Throw Rocks to the Side, is both a command of protection and clearance, which are also two of the prominent formal themes throughout this new body of work. The exhibition includes wall-bound and freestanding assemblage sculptures built from found objects and knitting. The soft knitted forms weave, tie and uphold rackets, suet feeders, and cake pans, procuring the functionality and agency from the once used objects. The role reversal between hard and soft elements in this exhibition examines the everchanging gender roles in the domestic space and is at the center of how each component simultaneously operates in the individual work and the exhibition as a whole.
Knitting Circle with Spinning Wheel and Spindle Demonstrations led by Nikki Stitch, held as an event accompanying Wear Closed Toe Shoes and Throw Rocks to the Side, November 1, 2019
Carley Zarzeka gives a talk introducing Wear Closed Toe Shoes and Throw Rocks to the Side at GOCA Downtown