Studios > Katrina Bello
Katrina Bello
My
current work is located in a dialogue between the relevance of
painting and questions of my ethics. While my ongoing interests lie in
place and memory, and spatiality and materiality, my struggle is to
reconcile those interests with the complexities beneath the surface of
my subjects: their historical, social and political contexts. Doubt is
an attitude that drives me in this current studio practice: suspicion
of being complicit with certain studio habits, uncertainties in the
level of responsibility I'm taking towards questions of context, and
finding ill-fits between my commitment to painting and certain truths
about my subject. Some of the questions I have been asking myself are:
How is painting a relevant medium in this inquiry? Because painting is
still linked to long established definitions of beauty, what can it
tell me and the audience about contemporary art production and
spectatorship? Is painting even still possible in our chaotic and sped
up present?" Also,
narrative is something I'm currently thinking about. It is pervasive
in my work. It holds together the layers of formal oppositions,
tensions, transformations and revisions that occur within the painting
and drawings. It defines my animation work. And so
for this residency at Gallery Aferro, I intend to focus particularly on
narrative as the boundary to put in specific form the questions I have
above. Katrina Bello
was born in Davao City, Philippines. She is a visual artist who lives and works back and
forth between Montclair and Newark in New Jersey, Baltimore, New York
City, and Metro Manila. She is also working on newark bunker projects,
a rogue curatorial experiment in Newark, New Jersey. As she works on
this project and participates in solo and group exhibitions, Katrina
currently pursues her MFA in Studio Art at the Maryland Institute
College of Art. She received her BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts
in Rutgers University in New Jersey, and attended the University of the
Philippines College of Fine Arts in Diliman, Quezon City as an
Industrial Design Major.
