WHAT DID YOU SMELL WHEN YOU WERE AWAY?
Katarina Weslien
APRIL 16 - JULY 10, 2021
About the Exhibition
Katarina Weslien’s solo exhibition brings together three long-term projects that instantiate Weslien's abiding interest in symbolic systems of meaning-making within and beyond spiritual traditions. The organizing elements of the three projects on view include interaction with water—specifically the Ganges River in India and its sources, mountain lakes in Tibet—rendered through deliberate and radical shifts of attention to overlooked or invisible dimensions of materiality.
Weslien has been drawn to and participated in India's spiritual culture and mythical landscape for more than 40 years (1976 to present). By her account, a comfort with dislocation has made these sometimes-arduous travels possible, and a deep appreciation of transience has resulted. She has returned to India again and again as a teacher, artist, and pilgrim, refining her vision by close examination and reflection. Her artistic range and command of materials captivate across the three sections of the exhibition: themes of water, pilgrimage and embodied spirituality, and material culture transformed are carried throughout.
About Katarina Weslien
Katarina Weslien is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. Her work takes form in cross-media installations, collaborative efforts, textile constructions, and print media. She builds her projects through layers of research with a particular interest in how images and objects elicit thoughts, emotions, and embodied knowledge. By investigating the possibilities of how different confluences of materials, people, events, and the environment reflect our interdependence, her work serves to reveal how meaning is embedded and exposed within the context of shifting sets of circumstances.
Weslien received her BFA in Textiles and from Utah State University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She is the former editor of the Moth Press at the Maine College of Art, where she was also the director of graduate studies. More recently, she has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she also co-led study trips to India that focus on material culture and pilgrimage studies. Her work has been exhibited internationally and recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Payson Foundation, and the Maine Arts Commission. Her work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, among others. Originally from Sweden, she now lives on Peaks Island and works in Portland, Maine.
