Nina Katchadorian (Past Project)

Whale, 2014
1250 Prospect Street
11' x 80'

Nina Katchadourian's piece, Whale, is based on an image of a whale. It has a large eye with a steady gaze that seems to seek out contact. The whale is in clear view, but at the same time, it seems to be hiding. Installed on a long, horizontal expanse of wall, we don’t see the boundaries of the whale, whose body seems to continue beyond the borders of the mural. Although not shown at true, life-size scale, Katchadourian has chosen to represent the whale at the true scale that our imagination assigns to the planet’s biggest creature—and one that lives in the ocean not far beyond the mural itself.
 
Katchadourian worked with the changing sight lines of the wall and careful consideration of scale and image placement to create "an image that would have a very still, low-key, but also strong, steady, and mysterious presence. I wanted to use an image of a whale in a manner that would make it feel a bit like it was hiding, or hidden: one part lurking, one part furtive, one part shy."
 
Nina Katchadourian’s diverse practice engages many different media, including sculpture, photography, videography, and sound. She was born in 1968 in Stanford, California. She received her BA from Brown University and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. She is an associate professor on the faculty of NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Katchadourian’s work often springs from observations and interactions with common, everyday circumstances, resulting in artworks that are both humorous and rigorous, and marked by subtle wit.

One long-running theme deals with the relationship between human and non-human animals, explored in projects like the Mended Spiderwebs series (1998) and the multi-channel video installation Zoo shown in 2008 at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Her video Accent Elimination was included at the 2015 Venice Biennale as part of the Armenian pavilion, which won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Katchadourian's work is in public and private collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin; The Morgan Library, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Margulies Collection, Miami. Katchadourian lives and works between Brooklyn, New York, and Berlin, Germany.

Photos by Philipp Scholz Rittermann