Katia Hickmer
Katia Hickmer
Katia Hickmer

My work hopes to interrogate the contemporary human condition through ongoing investigation into social experiences, including collisions of identity relating to the parent, the conundrum of ageing and ‘coming of age’, as well as the negotiation of self-image and internal rhetoric. 

Physical, emotional and psychological states are identified and visually re-assembled using performance based self portraits, executed in front of the camera lens.  Appropriated symbol and object act as ‘props’ to support and inform each staged scenario; and subsequently gain expressive significance when presented with the body and face of the artist.  The fusion of the exterior/scene and the interior/emotion is therefore key to the making and understanding of each photographic image.  Each performance is enacted on a created stage, designed to control the context of the subject and remove any opportunity for external articles to influence the reading of the finished image.  For this reason my work has a strong theatrical element, which at times may appear influenced by the surreal.

Of late, my research has been directed toward the study of Photo Therapy,– historically a term used to define camera-made works with the intention of self-healing.  Largely practiced by artists of a female gender, I acknowledge the ‘narcissism’ which is traditionally associated with and critically directed towards women who use their body in their art.  I suggest a new vanity-aware method of producing such images, which utilises the pose to describe the very essence of existing.  Exploring the Rhetoric of the Pose (as named by critic Craig Owens), I hope to recapture it from the realms of self-interest to that which is informative; the pose is the vehicle of the intelligent concept as opposed to a display of narcissism.

My work is from a specifically feminine perspective, and whilst the political nature of the personal is an important touchstone which I seek to build upon I hope to produce a more inclusive body of work which is not segregated as feminist.  Ultimately, I aim to present a synthesis of personal and collective memory to engage with and reflect upon the modern human psyche.

Katia graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2009 having spent four years completing her foundation degree and BA Fine Art.  Within months she had been given the opportunity to display her artwork on the London Underground with Art Below, shortly before being selected to take part in prestigious ongoing exhibition ‘Art in Mind’ at The Brick Lane Gallery. 

EDUCATION
2006-9 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design : BA Fine Art
[Upper Second Class Honours]
2005-6 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design : Foundation Studies
[Distinction]
FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS
2010 ‘The Oneiric Image: Symbols, Automatism and the Language of Dreams’, The
Lloyd Gill Gallery, Somerset
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2010 ‘Warriors’, The Gallery, Willesden Green Library Centre, Brent, London
2009 Art Below, Highbury and Islington Tube Station, London
2009 ‘Art in Mind’, The Brick Lane Gallery, London
2009 Degree Show, Central Saint Martins, Charing Cross Road, London
2009 ‘Not a Feminist Art Show!’The Electricians Shop, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London
2007 ‘On-Off Site’, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London
2006 Foundation Exhibition, Central Saint Martins, Back Hill, London
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS/REVIEWS
2010 Less Common More Sense, ‘The Great British Issue [17]’, March 11th, p.26
2009 The Hertfordshire Advertiser, ‘Katia’s Art At London Show’, No. 8165, Oct 8th