KATRIN KOENNING — In And With The World
MEMORY CULT Visiting Artist Series Presents
Katrin Koenning
In And With The World
Acclaimed visual artist Katrin Koenning visited us from her home studio to discuss the origin story of her practice, her philosophy of community, politics and care, and how she creates the context for her work. A gifted teacher, she presented works from Between The Skin and Sea, her debut monograph from Chose Commune. The member Q&A included dialogues on photography as relational encounter, the exhibition and book as forms and personal healing through daily practice.
b. 1978. Dortmund, Germany.
Lives and works in Naarm, Australia.
Katrin Koenning is a visual artist from Bochum-Langendreer (in the German Ruhrgebiet). Her work travels across still and moving images and text, at times including found materials, painting and collage. Pursuing intimacy and interconnection her work centres around practice as relational encounter. Most stories evolve through years and use returning as a way of drawing closer. Merging in and out of each other, different series often intersect. In her extended image-dialogues, Katrin uses fragments and slippages to suggest narrative spaces, communities and lived experiences that are allied, fluid and multiplicit. Many of her series render non-human human entanglement and intimate kin, positing imaginaries with a greater-than-human world.
Koenning has been the recipient of multiple awards, such as the Bowness Photography Prize. Her work is regularly exhibited in Australian and international solo and group exhibitions including presentations at Ishara Art Foundation Dubai, Chobi Mela, Paris Photo, Hamburg Triennial of Photography, Museum of Australian Photography, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Australian Centre for Photography and the National Gallery of Victoria (2023). Koenning’s images have been published in The New Yorker, Vogue.com, Zeit Magazine, The Guardian, New York Times, Esquire Italy, Der Spiegel, Yucca Magazine, California Sunday and many other places. Her work is held in numerous institutional and private collections both in Australia and abroad; most recently her large-scale installation while the mountains had feet [2020 — 2022] was acquired in whole by the National Gallery of Victoria.
Katrin regularly teaches workshops in photographic practice and thinking, working closely with many institutions and festivals locally and across the Asia-Pacific region such as Angkor Photo Festival (Siem Reap Cambodia), Photo Kathmandu (Kathmandu, Nepal), The Lighthouse (Calcutta, West Bengal), Myanmar Deitta (Yangon, Myanmar), Australian Centre for Photography, Perth Centre for Photography, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Museum of Australian Photography, Palmtree Workshops (Santorini Greece, forthcoming), and others.
Katrin lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne) on unceded Boon Wurrung Woi Wurrung Country.