Karina Faulstich is an interdisciplinary artist exploring relationships between cultural landscapes, gender, and systems of labor. Through diverse mediums including installation, performance, photography, and fiber, their work confronts ways in which patriarchy and capitalism inhabit the body while seeking to cultivate pathways of resistance. Karina studies Butoh dance and is the choreographer and dancer for the ongoing project Wilderness Mute, a collaborative and multimedia anti-nuclear performance. Their recent practice centers on textiles and alternative printmaking techniques. They use discarded, often mass-produced materials such as napkins and bedsheets and transform them through a regenerative process into handmade personal objects. Karina first began working with reclaimed fibers and fabrics for their accessibility but over time came to understand these materials as both symbols and practices of adaptability. They choose to continue working with these mediums in ways that subvert traditionally feminine “crafts” and allow for a tactile means of returning to the body.
Karina received her B.F.A. from Pitzer College in 2015. She is the recipient of a Mellon Environmental Analysis Fellowship, a Fulcrum Fund Grant and the North Street Collective Artist Residency. Karina is currently pursuing her MFA in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico.