Karen Knorr was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the 1960s. She finished her education in Paris and London. Karen has taught, exhibited and lectured internationally, including at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, The University of Westminster, Goldsmiths, Harvard and The Art Institute of Chicago.
Karen’s work developed a critical and playful dialogue with documentary photography using different visual and textual strategies to explore her chosen subject matter that ranges from the family and lifestyle to the animal and its representation in the museum context. With digital collage of animals, objects and social actors in museums and architecture, she challenges the authority and power of heritage sites in Europe and more recently in India.
In her series “Fables” (2004-2008) photographs mixes analogue and digital photography playfully reconfiguring tales (Ovid, Aesop, La Fontaine) with popular culture (Disney and Attenborough) in museums and heritage sites. The visuality of these photographs is rich with reference to the baroque. In the last section of the work, Knorr interrogated the free flowing space of modern architecture in Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye reintroducing life into the modernist aesthetic of a building.
Since her life changing journey to Rajasthan, India in 2008, Karen Knorr’s work continues to explore Rajput and Mughal cultural heritage and its relationship to questions of feminine subjectivity and animality. “India Song“, a series of carefully crafted photographs explores the past and its relation to India’s contemporary heritage sites across Rajasthan.
Since 2012 Knorr has been visiting Japan to reflect on tradition within contemporary Japan, referencing Ukiyo-e prints and folktales connected to Shinto and Buddhist heritage sites. Her first series entitled “Monagatari“, places animals and humans in temple sites found in Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo and Ohara. Future projects are now developing in Italy, India, Japan and USA.
Images courtesy of Karen Knorr
Discover: karenknorr.com
