Katja Novitskova

bio:
Katja Novitskova, born 1984 in Tallinn, Estonia, lives and works in Amsterdam. She was artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 2013 to 2014.

concept:
Novitskova’s work tackles the complexity and eventual failures of depicting the world through technologically driven narratives. By uniting art and science to the level of nature, Novitskova brings awareness to the mediation and representation tools used to depict these realms.

More specifically, Novitskova’s work focuses on the mapping of biological territories that are no longer outside but rather ‘inside’ biological bodies. The technological devices, such as microscopes or brain scans, used to mediate and depict those alternative geographies are able to merge datasets and biology, altering how biology and technology develop. In Novitskova’s mind ‘the look inside has somehow replaced the gaze into the future.’ From parasitic worms to robotic nurturing or incubating machines, technological devices are not only dominating the inner biological realm, but also the affective one. Katja ́s adoption of the baby swigs as ready mades, turning them into sci-fi-like looking creatures, is a wink to new technologies of affection and care, mediated through algorithms and artificial intelligence. Those works bring up memories of the “alien” depicted by science fiction, as well as the role of the non-human in a hypothetic not so distant future.

In 2018 the publishing house Ringier released their Annual Report with a commission of Novitskova. Between 2017 and 2018 her third artist book ‘If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes’ with Kumu Art Museum and Venice Biennale through Sternberg Press and in 2016 ‘Dawn Mission’ was published with the Kunstverein in Hamburg. In 2010, she published the influential artist book the ‘Post Internet Survival Guide’.

Novitskova interrogates the positions and locations where the technological and physical coincide, understanding them as two facets of the same ideological continuum. Blurring distinctions between media, she is interested in the interpretation and perception of visual material and works with digital collages, sculptures and installations. Katja Novitskova also released a text, Post Internet Survival Guide in 2010, an exploration into the creation and distribution of art online in that year. It is both the artist’s publication and an installation; not solely to be read, it has also featured as the subject of numerous artworks. As digital materials rapidly change, an image can soon alter and take on new meanings. In the foreword to the book, Novitskova asserts that “the notion of a survival guide arises as an answer to a basic human need to cope with increasing complexity”. She describes it as an essential tool that addresses the space “where we ask ourselves what it means to be a human today”.

https://www.artuner.com/artists/katja-novitskova/

works:

reference:

Katja Novitskova