Artist, curator, and translator, Katherine Desjardins earned her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, where she worked with mentors associated with Italian Radical Design.
Her project-based practice expands upon her training as a painter through creation of installations, drawing, video, and performance. Culture shock, political indignation, cognitive dissonance, humor—all find expression through a collage sensibility that privileges abrupt cuts, layering, and collision between raw and refined, familiar and unknowable material.
In 2013 she founded "Re/visible Cities", a parallel art practice that engages experiential pedagogy towards creation of collaborative projects that spark dialog on climate change, immigration, and gang violence. She exhibits internationally and is recognized by awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Since 2021, Katherine divides her time between Chicago and Florence, where she is converting a former factory into an international arts incubator dedicated to developing new models for cross-disciplinary, experiential learning in the Humanities.