Catherine

Khamnouane

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First Strike (2024)


Found objects, oriented strand board (OSB), detritus, sawdust






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Half-Staff (2024)


Canvas, Japanese Red Pine, steel









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Pax Americana (2022)

Canvas, gutter elbow, grass, organic matter, sand, water

In its 54 years of service in the United States Army, Boeing CH-47D Chinook “My Old Lady” long symbolized the destruction and salvation of military might. Over the course of the installation, a sack of increasingly rancid water “lactates” steadily onto corresponding detritus below: ensuring life, then death.




 





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With Love! (2020)


A Sunday Supper Club event via Refusing Refusal, a multi-media show in Baltimore, MD












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Family Style (2020)



A Sunday Supper Club event hosted by Waller Gallery in Baltimore, MD






 


       





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Taproot (2019)



TAPROOT synthesizes two polarizing experiences of being both brown and Asian in a country that historically neglects racial nuance. Suspended between their parents’ culture and US mainstream culture, the two artists embody distinct perspectives: one of assimilation and one of frequent migration between continents. TAPROOT argues that what is manmade is natural: through the lens of various natural systems, Catherine and Samiha [Alam] discuss transplantation, consumption, and geographical boundedness.







  




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Capillary Bowl (2019)

Detail view - TAPROOT

White oak, ready-made objects, atmospheric moisture, imported Jasmine tea



Capillary Bowl, a reference to the fantastical perpetual motion machine, cold brews Jasmine tea. Over time, water is taken out of the air and syphoned through a series of distillation techniques. The brewed tea that collects below becomes a record of what has transpired in the room the machine occupies.  




  
 





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Next Door (2019)

Detail view - TAPROOT
Friendly’s Fried Chicken, oriented strand board, found objects

In 12 whole wings with salt-pepper-hot sauce, I consume Baltimore as the gallery audience consumes me.








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Scout’s Honor (2018)

Installation view

“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;  to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight."




When my parents immigrated to the United States in the 1980’s, they followed a wave of others just like them: young, hopeful, hailing from one of the numerous Asian countries that, in the past century, had felt the military influence of the place they sought refuge. With them, they brought values and mythos filtered through the reality warp of language barriers and cultural clashes. Voices unravel a knitting, a salute unfurls paper towels and the smell of frying meat wafts to the tune of the National Anthem. Scout’s Honor leans on quiet but telling symbols: 1) SPAM, 2) phytoremediation and 3) The Kissinger Report, shuffling familial fables into the deck of a pockmarked national history.









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Scout’s Honor (2018)

Detail view
Ash wood, enamel pin, sunflower microgreens










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