Arts and Sciences | EventsMay 03, 2024

UAFS Artist Concludes Residency with 'Is There a Place'

Katya Grokhovsky, a Ukrainian-born, New York City-based artist, recently concluded her residency at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith with a series of culminating events, showcasing her exploration of complex social themes and the work she created during her time in the River Valley.

"Is There a Place?" is a site-specific pop-up exhibition in a former railway warehouse in Fort Chaffee. This mixed-media, immersive exhibition, is  on view from April 27 to May 9, 2024, with open tour hours from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and by appointment throughout the week.  This mixed-media, immersive exhibition explores displacement, cultural dissonance and migration through sculptural assemblage, fiber, painting, video and performance.

“This project employs the notion of locality and the search for familiarity and play as transformative gestures at the time of global trauma. By excavating and reconstructing materiality as a space of fragmented generational memory, ‘Is There a Place?’ investigates ever looming alienation and undeniable impermanence as a possible space of desire, healing and humanity,” said Grokhovsky.

Grokhovsky also presented "Phone Home," a one-night house intervention at the UAFS Resident Artist Guest House, which extended her ongoing project on themes of home, belonging, dissociation, and tedium, which she has developed across various domestic settings.“Exploring the art-life principle, Phone Home presents an accumulative exhibition-installation, composing a peripheral shadow-image of an artist’s existence, reflecting on the loneliness and isolation of travel and temporary habitation and its effect on psyche and body,” she said.

Both events were part of Grokhovsky’s commitment to addressing global trauma and personal history through her art. Her work often employs locality, play, and the reconstruction of materiality as methods to explore alienation and impermanence.

Grokhovsky, who is the founding director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial, has been recognized widely through numerous residencies and grants. Her extensive body of work spans installation, performance, sculpture, fiber, video, photography, painting, and drawing.

The UAFS Art & Design Artist in Residence program, supported by a gift from the Windgate Foundation, aims to bring accomplished artists like Grokhovsky to enrich the cultural landscape of the university and its surrounding community. More information about the program can be found on the UAFS website.

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ABOUT KATYA GROKHOVSKY

Grokhovsky received a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Victorian College of the Art at Melbourne University in Australia, and a Bachelor of Art (Honors) in Fashion from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Through research, play, experimentation, and autobiographical experience, Grokhovsky weaves the personal and political together. She builds worlds and personas that examine stereotypes, prejudices, and oppression, emphasizing the absurd and the uncanny in the everyday.

Learn more about Grokhovsky by visiting her website: https://www.katyagrokhovsky.net.

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• Artist in Residence
• College of Arts and Sciences
• Art and Design