ARTIST STATEMENT
Sick Party explores invisible illness and the ongoing pressure to perform ‘wellness’ in everyday life while feeling anything but well. The figures in Sick Party are arranged clumsily to resemble a human form, limbs and necks stretched, knotted, and tangled. The smile and eyes are hollow, a facade to hide within.
The performance of wellness initially served as a way to escape from bodily experiences but slowly transitioned into an amorphous pressure. When the grueling performance ended, space was made to listen to the subtle somatic language of the body and nervous system, reconnecting me with my intuition and ability to accept care from others.
The works in Sick Party are made using a natural dye technique called mordant painting. A mordant (metal salt) is used as a fixative to adhere the pigment to the fabric. These metal salts can be combined with a thickener and painted onto the fabric surface. When the fabric is dyed, the image appears on the fabric as the dye particles adhere to the mordant painting, and the background colour remains empty.
BIO
Katrina Craig is a visual artist and craftsperson living in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty 1 territory. Originally from Prince Edward Island, Katrina Craig attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles and Fashion.
Her background in textiles and fashion are found in her work through her use of fibre, three dimensional soft sculpture forms, and the use of textile techniques and needlework in her mixed media projects. While Craig’s work has a continuing thread of textiles, her work often engages with other modes of making including: photography, video, hand lettered text, drawing and writing.
Craig uses an innate feature of craft based practice: time, labour and process, as a means to explore the intersection of the body and the mind. Her work often references or interacts with the body. It may be worn, referenced in the artwork’s form, or the work may be draped overtop of wire body forms. Craig utilizes her own body through recording herself working bit by bit on her projects, often transforming everyday objects into new structures using needlework, weaving, or other textile techniques.
Exploring topics such as chronic illness, grief, change and transformation, Craig uses visual metaphor to express the subtle changes and invisible labour of internal life. She gives particular focus to how these internal changes translate into and are encouraged by somatic experience in the body.
![A human appearing form has a long neck and large eyes and a small smile. Her hair and limbs are rounded and distorted to resemble a human nervous system. Small lines of yellow, orange, grey and olive green overlap to give the appearance of nerves running along the body. The figure is appliqued onto a bright orange background](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Embodiment-565x1024.jpeg)
dye mordant painting with onion skins and marigolds on cotton, hand dyed wool
37” x 20”
2023
$950
![Embodiment detail](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Embodimentdetail-1024x768.jpeg)
![A human figure is depicted with thick and bold olive green lines floating in water, with very stretched and thin arms and legs relaxed, and hair floating. There are ripple marks and lines to show that the figure is floating. The hair and skin are bright yellow. Her face has large, round, blank eyes and a small smile.](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Floating-1024x854.jpeg)
Natural dye mordant painting with onion skins
18” x 24”
2023
$300
![A warm gray outline of a distorted human form with stretched, tangled and meandering limbs and torso. The head falls to the left side and has large, round, blank eyes and a small smile. The folded stretched limbs falling to the bottom, with the appearance of crossed legs. There is yellow inside of the outline, giving soft colour and texture. There is a faint gray background of cylinders meandering.](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Folds-825x1024.jpeg)
Natural dye mordant painting with weld on cotton
54”x43”
2023
$1250
![Folds detail #1](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/foldsdetail1-225x300.jpeg)
![Folds detail #2](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/foldsdetail2-225x300.jpeg)
![A bold and graphic deep gray outline of a distorted human form with stretched, tangled and meandering limbs and torso on the bottom. There is a very long neck with a head on the top, floating up like a helium balloon, with clouds surrounding. There are orange painted details on the body, neck, face and clouds.](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Headintheclouds-314x1024.jpeg)
Natural dye mordant printing with coreopsis on cotton
104” X 20”
2023
$700
![Head In The Clouds detail #1](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Headinthecloudsdetail1-225x300.jpeg)
![Head In The Clouds detail #2](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Headinthecloudsdetail2-213x300.jpeg)
![Triangular shaped bunting has gray bubble lettering spelling “Sick Party” outlined with purple embroidery. Fuschia blobby shapes appear behind the letters on the bunting.](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Sickparty-1024x800.jpeg)
Natural dye mordant printing with cochineal on cotton, repurposed cotton poplin, wooden beads
40” x 30”
2023
$1250
![Sick Party detail #1](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/sickpartydetail1-225x300.jpeg)
![Sick Party detail #2](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Sickpartydetail2-225x300.jpeg)
![A bold and graphic deep gray outline of a distorted human form with stretched, tangled and meandering limbs and torso. There is a soft gray background. Purple shadows give depth to the outline. The figure’s head is on the left side and has large, round, blank eyes and a small smile.](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Tangledup-1024x806.jpeg)
Natural dye mordant painting with logwood on cotton
54”x43”
2023
$1250
![Tangled Up detail](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/tangledupdetail-1024x768.jpeg)
![Distorted hands and wrists with elongated fingers and arms are tangled and twisted around each other. The fabric is soft warm pink, with a medium gray outline. The twisted shape in the arms is repeated in a faint background, with long curving shapes.](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Thecraftsperson-899x1024.jpeg)
Natural dye mordant painting with madder and weld on cotton
24” x 36”
2023
$950
![The Craftsperson detail](https://aanm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/thecraftspersondetail-768x1024.jpeg)