Biography:
Rebecca Kautz (b.1978 Princeton, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist working across media and into an expanded hybrid. She has a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and MFA from The University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as a Master’s of Arts in Educational Leadership. She incorporates reflective, expository writing and drawing with action based research and social interventions which are documented with photography and video. The process of writing and drawing are often translated into, or from, durational performance works as an attempt to embody and expand on the problem under investigation. Operating through a feminist lens, her work is related to psychology, sociology and human development. The artist utilizes the histories of performance art, art as social activism, and journalistic processes to engage the local and broader community. Her work has been published and exhibited Internationally in “Word Power: Language as Medium”, “Emergency Index”, and “The Social Art Award: Invigorating the Rise of Social Art”, Exhibition record and awards include; 10thAnnual International Drawing Exhibition, Award of Distinction (Juror, Claire Gilman of The Drawing Center New York), Larry S.Temkin Exhibition Award, CICA Museum, Korea, The Ski Club (Milwaukee), Hera Gallery (Rhode Island), Indianapolis Art Center, Portrait Society Gallery (Milwaukee), Lakeside Legacy Foundation,(IL) , OFF The WALL International Video Art Screening at Arts + Literature Lab, AnySquared’s Art @ Coles (Chicago), The Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago. Presenter at Open Engagement Conference on Socially Engaged Art, a Social Art Award from the Berlin based Center for Art & Innovation and Salon Publication Fellow from Peripheral Vision Press. Kautz is currently an Adjunct Faculty at Mount Mary University in Milwaukee, Wi
Rebecca Kautz-Artist Statement
My artwork relates to conflicts of social progress and personal self-concept stemming from gendered violence. I am an action based artistic researcher on gender, human development, and psychological phenomena. I incorporate socially engaged, durational performance art with a prolific output of two-dimensional work. My work follows two trajectories, occupying two distinct spaces: one is public advocacy and the other is a personal and private exploration of the themes. My socially engaged performance work is conceptual, durational, image and text driven. My digital documentation of these performances includes video, digital photographic prints, photo books, and the use of social media for daily documentation. Meanwhile, two-dimensional media of writing, painting/drawing provide a translation of the psychological effects of the gesture and social experiment. Painting and drawing occurs in tandem with all other action.
These seemingly distinct art historical trajectories, performance art and painting & drawing , are both utilized to negotiate autobiographical narratives of psychological space, social dynamics of belonging, institutions, and progress. This body of work references symbols of popular American culture such Girls Scouts, Olympics, schooling , home and religious life. These ideological images consider systems as they relate to the intersections of race, class and gender. Refusal to conform to one stylistic oeuvre highlights a purposeful maladjustment and the ostracizing of some voices in the social hierarchy. Drawing is viewed as a form of journalistic recording. It is connected to earliest forms of learning and harnessed for its immediacy and nature of revealing errors.
Rebecca Kautz (b.1978 Princeton, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist working across media and into an expanded hybrid. She has a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and MFA from The University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as a Master’s of Arts in Educational Leadership. She incorporates reflective, expository writing and drawing with action based research and social interventions which are documented with photography and video. The process of writing and drawing are often translated into, or from, durational performance works as an attempt to embody and expand on the problem under investigation. Operating through a feminist lens, her work is related to psychology, sociology and human development. The artist utilizes the histories of performance art, art as social activism, and journalistic processes to engage the local and broader community. Her work has been published and exhibited Internationally in “Word Power: Language as Medium”, “Emergency Index”, and “The Social Art Award: Invigorating the Rise of Social Art”, Exhibition record and awards include; 10thAnnual International Drawing Exhibition, Award of Distinction (Juror, Claire Gilman of The Drawing Center New York), Larry S.Temkin Exhibition Award, CICA Museum, Korea, The Ski Club (Milwaukee), Hera Gallery (Rhode Island), Indianapolis Art Center, Portrait Society Gallery (Milwaukee), Lakeside Legacy Foundation,(IL) , OFF The WALL International Video Art Screening at Arts + Literature Lab, AnySquared’s Art @ Coles (Chicago), The Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago. Presenter at Open Engagement Conference on Socially Engaged Art, a Social Art Award from the Berlin based Center for Art & Innovation and Salon Publication Fellow from Peripheral Vision Press. Kautz is currently an Adjunct Faculty at Mount Mary University in Milwaukee, Wi
Rebecca Kautz-Artist Statement
My artwork relates to conflicts of social progress and personal self-concept stemming from gendered violence. I am an action based artistic researcher on gender, human development, and psychological phenomena. I incorporate socially engaged, durational performance art with a prolific output of two-dimensional work. My work follows two trajectories, occupying two distinct spaces: one is public advocacy and the other is a personal and private exploration of the themes. My socially engaged performance work is conceptual, durational, image and text driven. My digital documentation of these performances includes video, digital photographic prints, photo books, and the use of social media for daily documentation. Meanwhile, two-dimensional media of writing, painting/drawing provide a translation of the psychological effects of the gesture and social experiment. Painting and drawing occurs in tandem with all other action.
These seemingly distinct art historical trajectories, performance art and painting & drawing , are both utilized to negotiate autobiographical narratives of psychological space, social dynamics of belonging, institutions, and progress. This body of work references symbols of popular American culture such Girls Scouts, Olympics, schooling , home and religious life. These ideological images consider systems as they relate to the intersections of race, class and gender. Refusal to conform to one stylistic oeuvre highlights a purposeful maladjustment and the ostracizing of some voices in the social hierarchy. Drawing is viewed as a form of journalistic recording. It is connected to earliest forms of learning and harnessed for its immediacy and nature of revealing errors.
Curriculum Vitae

rebecca_kautz_teaching_art_cv_2020.pdf |
CONTACT
|
|