Kathryn Bawden

Adjunct Instructor

Kat Bawden (she/they, b. 1986, Chicago, IL) is an artist working across photography, video, installation, and performance. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates image-making and photographic processes as means to explore traumatic experience and the body while questioning our relationship to reality, control, and truth. Kat holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was awarded the James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions and performances include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2025, 2026); Compound Yellow, Chicago (2026), EXPO Chicago (2025); Roots & Culture, Chicago (2025). Select group exhibitions and performances include the Chicago Cluster Project (2025); Elastic Arts, Chicago (2025); the International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago (2024); the Design Museum of Chicago (2024); Iceberg Projects, Chicago (2023); the International Center of Photography, New York (2021); and others.

Kat has been awarded a 2026-2028 residency with the Chicago Artists Coalition and an Individual Artist Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She has been an artist-in-residence with Cow House Studios (Ireland), Prairie Ronde (Vicksburg, Michigan), ISSP (Riga, Latvia), and Artists in Public Schools (Chicago). Kat’s work has been featured in Artforum, Der Grief, Lenscratch, Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times, Sixty Inches from Center, and others. Kat is the founder and director of Murmuration, an experimental art space and artist residency,. Before becoming an artist, Kat studied political philosophy and environmental science at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, and spent a decade working as a community organizer, documentarian, and teacher.