She/Her
https://www.oicherman.art/katya-opening
katya@oicherman.art
Interdisciplinary, Fiber Arts & Textiles
Online

BIO 

Katya Oicherman is an independent artist, researcher, and educator working with textiles, based in Cleveland, OH. Looking for stories in textiles and in domestic rituals, she reflects on the emergence of family mythologies. Examining cloth in contemporary art, Oicherman emphasizes its overlooked role in civilization, and significance in Jewish ritual. She studied textile art (Shenkar College, Israel) and modern Jewish studies (University of Leeds, UK). Her practice-based PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London addressed 19th century German Jewish ritual textiles, imbuing historical craft artifacts with contemporary relevance through creative research. Her historical research focuses on the material culture of sleep. This research feeds into Oicherman’s practice as an editor and curator, examining the role of sleep and bed linen in everyday life. “Dream/Bed” is a series of texts she commissioned as a guest editor for MNartists, an art writing platform for the Walker Art Center. Bringing together a diverse group of local artists and writers, the series captures the contemporary state of sleeping and being in bed. She continued this work as an Artist Curator-in-Residence at the Museum of American Art in St. Paul with an exhibition “Imperfect Slumbers” opened in February 2023.

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY & MENTORSHIP

Any material creative practice, even in its most physical and intimate form, is a question asked and answered simultaneously. This is not to suggest that all making is necessarily textual or theoretical, but rather to stress that all making comes from certain needs and concerns. Making is a behavior that is continuously performed and repositioned. In that sense, the maker is never alone and is always engaged in a constant, changing dialogue—or, using Tim Ingold’s ample term, is in correspondence with oneself and the world. As a teacher, my essential role is to support students in revealing and articulating their correspondences with the world. Such articulation develops awareness of one’s own practice and its consequences to other practices and people who are making, sensing, reflecting, questioning, and responding. As makers and thinkers, we produce (co)responsive knowledge: an awareness and experience of interdependent living, which is essential in times such as ours, when the capacity to live on is questioned, even shattered.