Bio:
Kate Flake (b. 1991 Decatur, GA) is an interdisciplinary artist and Graduate Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kate is influenced by their time spent working as an educator in Ehime, Japan, and growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA. They currently work with photography, textiles, and printmaking to create work about alienation, the queer body, and family. Kate has a BFA in Printmaking from the University of Georgia and a Post Baccalaureate Certificate in Fine Art from Brandeis University. They have interned with the Atlanta Printmakers Studio in Atlanta, GA, and worked as a Fob Holder and Education Coordinator with Second State Press in Philadelphia, PA. Their work has been shown nationally at the Image Flow Photography Center, the Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art, and the Textile Art Center, and they have been a resident at the OZ House Artist Residency in Ozu, Japan. Their collaborators include Baran Ataei and Stephanie Van Riet.
Statement:
My work explores memory, identity, and embodiment through photography, textiles, and collage. Drawing from personal and familial archives, I reassemble fragments of the past—photographs, inherited quilts, family stories—into new compositions that reflect the instability of memory and the fluidity of self. My practice is a form of recontextualizing and reclaiming: I use blankets as symbols of warmth, labor, absence, and comfort. They represent the desire to hold or be held, especially when our connections to loved ones are eroded or lost. In fragmented textiles, distorted photographic prints, and layered installations, I examine the dissonance between what was, what is remembered, and what is felt in the body.
As a queer, non-binary person, I use abstraction to challenge normative representations of the body. My textile works distort, obscure, and reconfigure my self-portraits and family photographs to better reflect my lived experience, one that resists fixed categories and embraces multiplicity. Working with touch-based materials, such as fabric, serves as a way to reconnect with a body I’ve long felt alienated from while also honoring the textile traditions of my foremothers. Each stitch, print, and patch becomes a gesture toward healing and reintegration.