Katrina Andry

On view at FLSXT Contemporary, master printmaker Katrina Andry captivates viewers with her visual articulations of Black American history. The show entitled Unthinkable Renderings entices viewers through the beautiful compositional choices and provokes through her choices of subject matter of her prints. Indeed, feelings of estrangement caused by the work’s subject matter complicate our ideas of their beauty. The prints are unthinkable renderings of unimaginable imagery. Andry re- signifies everyday symbols into catalysts for critical self-analysis. She asks us to reconsider whether these symbols are as benign as we might unwittingly think they are. The Black bodies in her prints are posed typical for the era—side-profile or staring at the viewer head on. Most of the people in her prints are Black women, some adorned with a crown of candles while others look like they were takendirectly from a children’s story. Her prints are satirical as they are allegories of how race and racism functions in the US. Andry’s visual oeuvre is consistent. Her work exclaims: Black lives matter! Inexplicably, there are those that continue to wonder why. Unthinkable Renderings offers up reasons for those still questioning.

The artist notes, “In my art practice, I strive to understand how we arrived here in this time, and how these social hierarchies manifest in our everyday lives whether consciously or subconsciously. I question our collective consciousness as well as the disciplines that inform our worldviews about our identities. The research that I put into creating my prints deepens my understanding of who I am and provides greater context of world around me. Often my prints capture a newfound awareness of certain topics or reenforces beliefs that I have grown up knowing.” This expansive practice allows Katrina Andry to deconstruct the world around her and to thoughtfully marry the past and present.

Andry, like many of us, continues to ask questions. Her printmaking is research-based. The prints that she produces are grounded to oral histories as much as they are the historical archives.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Katrina Andry received her MFA in Printmaking in 2010 and was listed in Art in Print magazine as one of the top 50 printmakers shortly after graduating. She has recently shown at the Hammonds House Museum (solo), the Pensacola Museum of Art (solo), and the New Orleans Museum of Art. She has also been an artist-in-residence at Anchor Graphics in Chicago, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, and the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.

ARTIST WEBSITE

www.katrina-andry.com

Image: Credit line Katrina Andry, I Am Not Your Chocolate Fantasy. Don't Touch My Hair #3, 2016, Color woodblock reduction print on printmaking paper, 34 x 42 inches, unframed (49 x 44 x 2.25 inches.