Artist’s Statement

I’m a multi-disciplinary and social practice artist whose work reveals connections between grief, colonialism, sanity, and identity. My approach is rooted in an apprenticeship to the natural and material world. I greet teachability and unknowing as ethical practices, entering into reciprocal relationships with materials, ecologies, and communities. I surrender to the unpredictable wisdom of underwater environments, the materials that I use, and collective processes. My work translates this wisdom into invitations toward interdependence, belonging, and worlds beyond isolation and harm.

I create mixed-media handbound books, sculptural kaleidoscopes, paintings, drawings, and installations that draw from my experiences with psychiatric institutions as well as with scuba diving. My work illuminates threads between disparate entities and concepts, such as sanity, coral bleaching, and carcerality. I then use these threads to weave luminous new worlds. I use materials ranging from graphite and gold leaf to film slides, brake lights, and snake skins. I cut, paint, stitch, illuminate, and reassemble them, inviting perspective-shifting and imagination. 

Within social practice, I co-create happenings that center the subconscious, the surreal, the wild, and the relational. These events include multi-logues, parades, facilitation, trauma-informed scuba training, underwater performance, and Creative Psychiatric Advance Directives. In other words, I’m fun.

Across disciplines, my work engages conditions for principled action, world-building, and care. I explore what makes collective liberation imaginable, then invite others to make it real.

Bio

Catherine Edgerton is a queer, white, multimedia artist whose practice is rooted in apprenticeship to coral reefs, collective imagination, and abolitionist world-building. Born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, she spends half her time at sea. Her work as a sailor and dive instructor is a portal. Through this portal, she maintains relationships with coral and underwater worlds, which deeply inform her creative practice. 

Edgerton has exhibited in galleries and museums across the country, including The Carrack Modern Art, Artspace, and the Cameron Art Museum in North Carolina; the LGBTQ Center in San Francisco; and the Warehouse in New Orleans. She has published literature and art in publications such as the North Carolina Literary Review, About Place Journal, and Another Chicago Magazine. She has received fellowships and awards from the Hayti Heritage Center, the Highlander Center, Alternate ROOTS, Southern Vision Alliance, Press On Media, Groundswell, Visual Art Exchange, and the Women Divers Hall of Fame.

Creating much of her work in and with community, Edgerton co-initiated the Durham Art Asylum, which builds creative pathways and reduces isolation among folks who struggle with mental health and addiction in Durham, North Carolina. From this work sprang the uprise of multiple social practice projects and collaborations that employ kaleidoscopes, SCUBA diving, and archiving to engage abolitionist practices with a creative lens. She is currently the lead organizer for Queen Street Magic Boat, a mixed-use art space and surrealist hub for building and sustaining visionary community connections through water, the arts, and wild imagination.