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.
CONTACT
MEDIA
Interviews, artist talks, podcasts, and other media appearances.︎ Return to Main Page
Interviews and Artist Talks
UCCS Visiting Artist + Critics Series
At UCCS, Katherine co-organized and led the Visiting Artist + Critics Series, a series co-produced by the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art and UCCS Visual Art & Art History programs which has invited artists and scholars to the UCCS campus to present public lectures and meet with undergraduate students in classes and workshop settings. More about the series can be found here.
Videos of interviews and talks organized by Katherine are below. Many of these were associated with shows curated by Katherine as part of the FEARS residency. More information about FEARS can be found here.
elin o’Hara slavick
April 8, 2021
elin o’Hara slavick is an artist, activist, curator, mother, poet, critic, educator, and Professor of Visual Art, Theory, and Practice based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. slavick's conceptual practice revolves around the idea of making visible what we often do not see, while never separating form from function, theory from practice, or utopian concept from material reality.
Her work uses conceptual and alternative photography practices, such as 19th Century techniques and contemporary digital technology, to theorize, historicize, and aestheticize issues including the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and other bombings in which the United States has participated (both at home and abroad). slavick has exhibited her work internationally and is the author of Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography, with a foreword by Howard Zinn and essay by Carol Mavor and After Hiroshima, with an essay by James Elkins.
Kimberly English
February 4, 2021
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.
For more on Kimberly English’s FEARS exhibition touch-and-go, see here.
Sara Z. Meghdari
October 27, 2020
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.
For more on Sara Z. Meghdari’s FEARS residency, see here.
Danielle Rae Miller
September 30, 2020
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.
For more on Danielle Rae Miller’s FEARS exhibition Sacrum, see here.
Podcast
Angreement
When two lifelong friends found themselves unable to communicate productively as the world fell apart, they started a podcast. In each episode Katherine and Michelle talk about something weird, a piece of pop culture, and a research topic, then make it all fit together!
Foley’s Follies: An Angreement Special
In 2022, Katherine and Michelle presented a special, six-week edition of Angreement: Foley’s Follies! Each episode consists of three parts: a discussion of the book The Foley Grail, by Vanessa Theme Ament; the creation of actual foley noises that Michelle and Katherine suprise each other with; and finally, a full, scripted podcast-play utilizing what they have learned and made!
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Soundcloud
Foley’s Follies: An Angreement Special
In 2022, Katherine and Michelle presented a special, six-week edition of Angreement: Foley’s Follies! Each episode consists of three parts: a discussion of the book The Foley Grail, by Vanessa Theme Ament; the creation of actual foley noises that Michelle and Katherine suprise each other with; and finally, a full, scripted podcast-play utilizing what they have learned and made!
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Soundcloud