Kathleen Quigley
MFA ’24 Fine Arts Low-Residency
A recent shift in my practice from traditional media to lens based performative works has amplified my curiosity about knowing through experiencing the body. My focus is on meaning that arises from the gesture and the science of emotion and feeling. I have been exploring these themes via a practice of video recordings and writings on the processing of emotions and feelings that lean towards the abject. My body is a site that creates and expels the horrors of the everyday primal physicality of our nature. My intent is to produce work that makes the viewer conscious of a contradiction of reactions felt in their own body such as compassion and rejection, or the familiar and the uncomfortable. Emerging in my work are questions leading to the interrelatedness of embodied theory, the social community, biology, empathy, and the visceral – all leading to questions of what it is to be fully human.
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Kathleen Quigley is an artist and educator from the Boston area, traditionally trained in figurative drawing and sculpture. She has been working in the domain of the body for decades. Her current work is conceptual in nature,and employs video, writing and performance. Her work is informed by early experiences of navigating the social spaces of a large family, and its experiential themes stem from managing chronic pain with modalities including biofeedback and movement. Kathleen is a current MFA cadidate at MassArt, where she teaches figurative drawing and sculpting to animation majors. Kathleen holds a BFA in Illustration from the University of the Arts, Pennsylvania.
