Katrin Schnabl
I practice at the intersection of a number of disciplines, including dance, fashion design, art installation, performance, curating and teaching. My exploration and creative output involves linking these various modes of creative expression through my ongoing research into the relationship between space, movement and the body. Over the course of 30+ years, through individual as well as collaborative work, I have been gradually building a vocabulary and the tools to express my emotions and concerns, both conceptually and pragmatically.
Far from being forced into a hierarchical order, these collective disciplines – taken together -- are an essential part of a non-compartmentalized creative practice. This organic growth, allowing diverse fields of inquiry to align, is no doubt informed by collaborations with other artists. It is a method of working that reflects a world that has become increasingly connected and hybrid, one which pushes against binary modes of thinking and defies neat categorization.
In my practice, I connect patterns of movement to the patterns of a garment, in order to amplify the link between the body and the space around it. This leads to the exploration and fabrication of set-like structures that serve as extensions of body. These structures, whether garments or objects, not only hold meaning within them but can also activate a space through their presence. This exploration also results in the creation of what I term “proto-structures” or blueprints that can be manipulated to produce different iterations of a garment based on the same pattern or construction, or be investigated apart from the body. It is a methodology, which forms the basis for my work and research, one which straddles art and design. In this vein, I continue to collaborate within the field of dance and performance.
The process of imbedding meaning into pattern-making techniques also informs much of my installation work. By placing my hand-cut and sewn assemblages into unexpected locations, I want to heighten our perception of clothing as a membrane that filters information between individuals and their shifting contexts and interactions, whether on or off the body. While addressing questions of scale and proportion, these assemblages also touch on current issues affecting the world in which we live, such as environmental degradation and consumerism. (In my Limb series, for example, I stretched membranes of hand-knitted repurposed plastic bags onto hexagonal and circular frames.) My installations reflect an ongoing exploration into how the viewer negotiates and navigates internal and external spaces, allowing an open and expansive embodied investigation.
Katrin Schnabl is an artist, designer, and educator. Trained as a dancer, Schnabl moved from Frankfurt, Germany to New York, where she honed her skills both on stage, and off, by creating costumes for dance artists. She shifted towards fashion, and worked with renowned designers, including Jil Sander and Carolina Herrera before launching an independent fashion label Miche.Kimsa, followed by her eponymous line. Since relocating to Chicago, where she serves as the chair of the fashion department at the School of the Art Institute, Schnabl fluidly shifts between creating sophisticated garments that move sensuously on the body, and spatial installations that profoundly shift the relation with the body. Through these sensory and kinetic experiences she is forging new intersections and audiences for her project based practice.
