Katinka Huang

Katinka Huang - "Untitled".

Technique: Charcoal, ink and gesso on wooden panel

Artist Biography: Katinka moved to England from China at a young age - not with her family - but on her own. Katinka attended an all girls boarding school whose Western ideology about gender and propriety conflicted with the eastern ideology of femininity that she was brought up with in China. Katinka's upbringing at a boarding school dominated by girls ignited her interest in examining the female psyche. In response to the artist's state of confusion and alienation, she created alter-egos as a coping mechanism. Katinka uses these alter-egos in her art practice to create satirical images of women with warped, and animalistic bodies that portray absurdism and turbulent emotional states. The figures in Katinka's work celebrate the enigma of female psychology, confronting the historical definition within the West of an hysterical woman as "untamed," "fearful " , "neurotic" and most importantly, "with strong sexual desire." This stereotype persists to this very day and is a common characterisation of women as 'too emotional, too intense or too sensitive. In the 19th century, French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot showcased 'hysterical' women as objects of public spectacle after psychologically provoking them, before taking credit for uncovering the 'root' of women's trauma. Drawing from these accounts of history Katinka interlaces them with contemporary women whose 'hysterical' behaviours are sensationalised by the world. Katinka's mixed media figurative paintings uncover a mutilated female psyche by dissecting the genesis of her own trauma as a woman. Katinka uses painting as a personal diary. In the work, people and places the artist encounter in her everyday life are represented as monstrous or saccharine creatures, and as antagonists and protagonists.