Kara Rooney

Mas Vale Nunca Que Tarde (Better Never Than Later)

Pigment print, wood, acrylic, sand

"This is part of the 'Desire Line series,' which offers a critique of the process of gentrification, displacement and desire in Mexico City. Borrowing a term from landscape architecture, defined as the shortest distance between two points, the series' title is both a reference to capitalist greed and the value of architectural space in the preservation of collective memory.

Language is the driving force behind my work. I am interested in the intersection of the body, word, and object as a means of gaining deeper insight into how we communicate with each other—how we formulate identity (or hide it)—as well as to how language's inherent blind spots affect our sense of collective consciousness.

I explore these concepts through site-specific installation, performance, sculpture and digital collage. Emphasizing the glitch or rupture, I use these media to obfuscate, reveal, and choreograph the ways in which viewers encounter physical and psychic space: to question our understanding of linguistic and cultural inheritance."

– Kara Rooney

About the artist

Kara Rooney

Kara Rooney is an interdisciplinary artist and critic working in performance, sculpture and new media installation. Her visual work has been widely exhibited in international and domestic venues including Fridman Gallery, NY; TOTAH, NY; Driscoll Babcock Gallery, NY; A.I.R. Gallery, NY; the Chelsea Art Museum, NY; the Jersey City Museum, NJ; the Montclair Art Museum, NJ; the Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; El Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico, MX; and the Karamay Museum of Fine Arts, Xin Jiang, China. She has been an artist in residence at Palazzo Monti, Brescia, IT; the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program; the MeetFactory, Prague, CZ; La Quiñonera, Mexico City, MX; and the Queens College Art Center, NY among others. Rooney is a grant recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2020), the DUMBO Cultural Space Subsidy Program (2017 - 2020) and The Santo Foundation (2014).

In addition to her visual work, Rooney has held various positions as an art critic, visiting lecturer, and guest curator, most notably as Artseen Editor for The Brooklyn Rail from 2009 – 2016. Her critical writings have been published in Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic and M/E/A/N/I/N/G, as well as included in publications by David Zwirner Publishing, Whitechapel Gallery, London, and MIT Press. Rooney earned her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2009 where she serves as a longstanding faculty member and is a former adjunct professor at Rhode Island School of Design. She is the current curator and programming director of CLEA RSKY CDMX.