Katherine Aungier

“How can the work be playful,” Aungier asks, “while tied to the burdens of the past and concerns for the future?” Her practice continuously negotiates this tension, offering forms that are at once experimental, accessible and deeply engaged with social and historical realities.

Katherine Aungier is an interdisciplinary artist whose work centers accessibility as both an aesthetic and ethical framework. Working across painting, installation, performance and collaborative projects, she employs what she describes as “multi-sensory engagement: touch, sound, texture and rhythm” to challenge conventional hierarchies of perception and participation. These research-driven projects often engage specific sites and histories, including extended fieldwork at the former Manzanar War Relocation Center, where the works reexamine narratives of the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Across her work, she seeks to “de-enclose” space — dismantling physical and conceptual barriers while opening pathways for collective interaction. Through material openness and durational processes, her work invites participation and evolves through investigation of history. Aungier’s practice is grounded in collaborative inquiry. In her ongoing project, Blank < Plank, developed with artist Andy Slater, navigation happens through sound and touch, positioning embodied knowledge as central to both artistic production and audience experience.

“Aungier’s work is intuitive and relational, often questioning authorship,” says artist Amanda Ross-Ho, “It engages with histories of collectivity, particularly the legacies of collaborative artistic entities. She demonstrates a strong commitment to the communities in which she is embedded, as well as to the histories and conditions of specific sites.” Aungier is a former member of the respected artist-run space Regina Rex ( New York,NY) and currently acts as Associate Director of SOCIETY (Portland, OR). Aungier holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her work has been presented in exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, and most recently at Helen’s Costume, (Portland, OR). She has received numerous fellowships and residencies, including support from PICA’s Precipice Fund, SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellows, and IRIS Projects/Yucca Valley Material Lab through a residency funded by The Ford Family Foundation.

Additional photo description (left to right): Katherine Aungier, “The Ringer Irreconcilable,” 2022. Soft sculptures on a black rug and abstract paintings frame a video work “ untitled” made with Tarik Garrett as well as his, and a Yurt Tea Set made with Zachary Benson. Aungier’s “Moonface”, is a small, irregularly shaped artwork resembling a fan, and has a blended color palette of green, brown, and purple with light stretch marks revealing an orange underneath.