CONTACT: kweslien (at) mac (dot) com
Katarina Weslien’s work is cross-disciplinary, taking form in large-scale tactile installations, still and moving images, books, collaborative gestures, found objects, and the handmade. Across these forms, her work returns to moments of transformation—when one thing becomes another, when the familiar briefly shifts. Moving fluidly between objects and environments, she works at both intimate and architectural scales.
She works with materials that carry memory through use and touch: cloth, felt, paper, reflective films, water, and photographic images. Her projects develop in response to specific sites, beginning with close attention to the conditions of a space—its light, acoustics, circulation, scale, and history. Materials are not treated as passive supports, but as active participants that shape how a work is felt and encountered.
Weslien is interested in space as something experienced rather than fixed—how enclosure can be provisional and shared, rather than confining. Her work often invites a pause: a moment of hesitation before engagement, when looking slows and becomes listening, and meaning has room to emerge.
Underlying this practice is a belief in simple, embodied gestures. Small shifts in scale or texture, repetition, and acts of care become ways of thinking through making. She is less interested in spectacle than in attention—how it moves, drifts, and might be gently held.
Weslien is originally from Sweden, now living on the coast of Maine, USA. Her solo, group exhibitions, and collaborative projects have been showcased internationally including the Downey Museum, Bowdoin College of Art Museum, The John Michael Koehler Arts Center, MassMOCA, the 17th International Triennial of Tapestry in Łódź, Poland, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Payson Foundation, and The Maine Arts Commission, among others.
Weslien's educational background and development include a Master of Fine Arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI; an apprenticeship with artist Anita Graffman in Stockholm, Sweden; a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Utah State University in Logan, UT; and Environmental Design Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. She served for two years as a UN Volunteer with the United Nations Handicraft Development Program in Kurdistan, Iran, and has co-led study trips to India for many years including for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was visiting faculty in the Fiber and Material Studies department. Weslien has previously held roles as the editor of the Moth Press at the Maine College of Art and Design, where she was the director of graduate studies. Weslien's work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Portland Museum of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, Bates Museum of Art, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, as well as in various private collections and corporate commissioned spaces.
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