About

Kate Howe (she/they) (b. 1971) is an American artist living and working in London. Howe holds an MA (Painting) from the Royal College of Art, BA (summa cum laude) in Art History from Arizona State University, and an AA in Technical Theatre (highest honors) from Foothill College. She is the founder and current artist-in-residence at RuptureXIBIT (+Studio), a free residency and experimental exhibition space for artists in Hampton Wick, London. 

Howe’s work resists complicity with historical precedent. Her work spans painting, drawing, tattooing, textile work, sculpture, writing, performance, sound, social and experiential practices, and draws on her family ancestry in theatre, filmmaking, quilting, writing, and art. 

Howe responds to the canonical record by viewing historical works through forensic anthropology’s lens, engaging with these works as cold-case crime scenes from which she gathers evidence, re-contextualizing paintings, and resurrects their ghosts. 

Howe’s research-based practice is unflinching, unapologetic, excoriating, surgical, and relentless. 

“My research reveals the mechanisms by which we have always taught the subjugation of people and the acceptance of that subjugation as implicit/embedded - perhaps even as necessary to maintain the fabric of society. If we can reveal the mechanism of embedding, we can reveal it as mechanized, that is, inorganic, unnecessary: un-pickable”. 

Howe’s current body of work responds to Artemisia Gentileschi’s 1610 painting Susannah and the Elders and Eiko Matsuda’s 1976 performance and post-performance career in the Japanese erotic film “In the Realm of the Senses".