Tracks by Katie Koti
Landscapes seduce us. Even the most city-bred of people will succumb to the collective unconscious of beauty we see in nature. Painters and photographers have enticed us for centuries with such imagery, and will surely continue to do so. In contender Katie Koti's series Asunder, the Rhode Island artist visibly connects the landscape to the nature of the human body, furthering the idea of man's connection to the surrounding environment. Bent and nude, her figures—faces sometimes obscured and sometimes fully-bared—are entangled in the structures of their surroundings. The landscape and body become interchangeable, yet discrete entities.
Despite this seemingly natural reciprocation between nature and the body, the series' title, Asunder, suggests a separation more apparent than meets the eye. The nudity of the body is stark, and automatically draws our minds towards ideas on sexuality.
Katie writes,
Our society has attempted to rigidly define gender and sexuality into a binary divide. There is often a sense of disconnect that one can experience as a result of not fitting into these boxes. I hope to challenge these dichotomous roles as well as expose the struggle an individual can go through inside of their skin.
In previous work on gender study, Katie has highlighted this divide through scientifically arranged portraiture. Tightly cropped bodies systematically "undress identity" and remove the restrictive terminology we commonly associate with sexuality. In Asunder, Katie's figures are fixed amongst fields, bales of hay, decaying machinery, and other natural landscapes, their skin and bodies exposed in an external struggle with the place, they should theoretically feel most at ease.
Be sure to check out Katie's website to see additional work from this series as well as the The 50 States Project, where she is a participating artist. Hot ShotsShawn Records, Justin James Reed and 20x200 edition-maker Brian Ulrich are also contributors to the project, capturing portraits, the landscape, and industry across the United States.