Karla Kantorovich is a mixed media artist from Mexico based in Miami, FL. She works with paintings, fibers, and assemblages, leaning into the importance of texture and dimensionality as a way of exploring renewal. She draws inspiration from the world around her to create her pieces, especially nature. The textures, hues, and nuances she finds in nature are incorporated into her work. When developing artistic concepts - both for personal and community projects, Karla integrates diverse elements that together become greater than the sum of its parts.
Kantorovich explores ways to find unity in the distorted, the broken, and the dissonant, finding beauty in the passage of time, the old, even in decay. She brings this notion to life by reviving and reassembling disregarded materials found in nature and everyday life. The materials she uses tell a story: they have been places, the wear and tear make them valuable to her. She brings these materials together to create a new story, one that is multidimensional and multi-textural, combining the old, new, extraordinary, and the mundane.
The pieces are composed of diverse components sewn together with thread, creating a tapestry that visually represents unity and wholeness. Sewing is a metaphor, a way of rebuilding, and mending what was once fragmented to become whole once again. In life and in art, sewing things back together allows us to renew, and proceed.
Kantorovich recently completed her Masters in Studio Art from Florida International University (FIU) while actively showcasing her work on multiple international platforms such as the 2017 XI International Biennial of Contemporary art in Florence, Italy, and the 2017 MFA National Competition in New York. Some of her more recent exhibitions include the 2019 MFA exhibition at the Frost Art Museum and the International Art Contest in Rome, Italy. She was awarded an Honorable Mention for the XIX Bienal Rufino Tamayo in Mexico and her work will be featured at the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City and the MACO Museum of Arte Contemporaneo in Oaxaca, Mexico. Additionally, she was awarded the Oolite arts Ellies Creator Award in 2021.
Kantorovich’s unique approach to art accepts and honors the beauty of the cycle of life, one that focuses on the possibility that our existence extends far beyond the physical body, transcending materiality. It accepts the natural process of change and evolution, relishes in the imperfect and incomplete state of matter, and invites us to appreciate the stillness behind apparent chaos.
Karla Kantorovich
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