Biography

Inspired by the female figure as the ground where personal political violence and liberation intersect, Katherine Toukhy creates figures caught between contradictory transformative states. Her figures might be headless but dancing; or a head might transform into a burning tree. Maybe they are falling- or flying? Fluidly combining historical, subjective, and archetypal imagery in her forms, she collapses time and place, as a woman of the Egyptian diaspora in the U.S. Her mixed media female figures become small and large wall installations, prints, and videos. Toukhy is now a visiting artist at Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, and showing in "Expect Some Discomfort" at Empty Set Gallery (Bronx, NY). In 2019, she was part of BRIC’s Media Arts Fellowship and exhibited in “Figuring the Floral” at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY. She landed at Project for Empty Space (NJ) in 2018 as a feminist in residence. In 2017, Toukhy was invited by The Laundromat Project to co-present on the theme of “Sanctuary” at Lincoln Center for her work on “The Khayamiya Monument” a commissioned anti-militarism monument made of the herstories of female im/migrants and Iraq veterans critical of their time in combat. Toukhy's work has been supported by the Rema Hort Mann Foundation ACE Grant, Puffin Foundation, The Laundromat Project, a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Select works are included in private collections in Brooklyn, NY, Cairo, and the Yuko Nii Permanent Collection of the Williamsburg Art and Historical Society.