Katya Oicherman, Artist « MN Jewish Artists Directory

Art Form(s)

Digital, Fiber, Film/Video, Installation, Mixed Media, Performance Art

Connect

https://www.oicherman.art/katya/art

[email protected]

I am interested in collaborative work.

Minneapolis

Artist Statement

My interest is in storytelling and desire - or ways in which connections can be made and "a sense of story" created through making and writing. I was born in the USSR in the late 1970s, a third generation to the Great Patriotic War (WWII) and the Holocaust, born before the advent of the Internet and cellular technologies. I am a multiple immigrant of mixed blood and of what is called “a complex sense of identity”. Inhabiting such position what can be told, to what extent and in what way? What can be understood, known, felt? What remains beyond reach? I am an artist, educator and textile researcher. Engaging with video, installation, performance, craft and writing, I explore how personal and collective memories and identities are reflected in, and shaped by, material culture. On the one hand my creative research delves into the textiles in my family stories and histories as Soviet Jews, resulting in animated films and writing. On the other hand, examining the role of cloth in contemporary art, performance and cinema I create performative lectures with textiles.

Artist Biography
Educational Offerings

Katya lived in Russia, Israel and the UK, currently she is based in Minneapolis, USA. She is a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Minnesota and a Continuing Education lecturer at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She studied textile design and art, and modern Jewish studies in Israel and the UK. In her practice-based PhD (Goldsmiths, London) she studied 19th century German Jewish ritual textiles to develop a model of imbuing historical craft artifacts with contemporary relevance through rigorous creative research. She exhibited her artwork internationally. She published catalogue essays for prominent Israeli textile artists and research articles on the subject of the PhD. She taught textile art, design and history and headed the department of Textile Design (Shenkar College, Israel). She worked in the industry as a weaving textile designer for interior textiles.

Jewish ritual textiles and traditions
History of textiles
History and theory of craft
Digital pattern and surface design and textile design
Photoshop and Illustrator for craft oriented students

Work Samples