The Lovers - Billboard #1

Chernobyl is modern history’s most lasting example of Russian theorist Bakhtin’s “small time” versus “great time.” Almost thirty years hence, we are far away and still too close to its events to evaluate the social and environmental effects of its disaster. Frozen in time by the evacuation of its residents but open to the effects of elements and nature, its degradation in space and time exists as its own imperfect archive. One part personal narrative and two parts collective fever dream, Chernobyl Spring 1986, explores the events surrounding the disaster through recurring themes of young love, wilderness, mutation, and rebirth. The anxiety of an unseen and eternal enemy permeates the work with a suffocating and intimate tension.

Described as “haunting” and “visually captivating” the digital collages are assembled from both digital and hand cut images. The real and imagined, remembered and reinterpreted, original and appropriated create a visual chronotope that intertwines our media recollection of the Chernobyl disaster with the artist’s own story.

Kate's paintings and digital collages have been exhibited internationally. Her series of Last Meals paintings considered to her most important work thus far, they have been widely exhibited throughout the United States and Canada. She has been interviewed by both CBC Radio and Wired magazine and appeared in Wired USA & Italian editions as well as GQ magazine, Korean and Indian editions.

“It was just like that, felt just like that. We were even afraid to breathe.” ~B. Diener