Cat Tyc

Lives and works in Hudson / NYC

Artist statement

My practice operates at the intersection of poetics and media with text works, video installation and performance to explore and celebrate embodied queer femme experience. In 2009, I directed and produced a short film called Umbrella that was adapted from a short story by the writer Fernando Sorrentino called There Is a Man That Is In The Habit of Hitting Me Over the Head with an Umbrella. As part of the adaptation, I made the protagonist female and set the story in an abortion clinic. I was thinking about the writer Kathy Acker and her strategy of re-writing herself into classic novels like Great Expectations to see how that would change the perspective. After that, I started CONSUME(s) ME which is an interdisciplinary project that encapsulates a relational performance project into a prose essay. On the surface, it addresses the ethical problems surrounding textile production, consumption, and our relationship to what we wear. It is also a piece about coming to terms with how varying feminisms maintain patriarchy and capitalism through the personal narratives of clothing swap participants and myself as I discover that my maternal grandmother was a garment factory worker in Puerto Rico from the age of 14 till she came to the States. I threw a clothing swap at the Brooklyn Museum as part of Heather Hart’s BARTERTOWN project and then, in September 2015, I put up the Store in collaboration with ESP TV as part of their ANALOG residency at RECESS (NYC) where we turned the...

Artwork