Trace is an exhibition and talk as part of the Oxford Human Rights Festival. The work explored unidentified dead, including homeless people in the UK, and victims of genocide in Rwanda. Katie is an artist and PhD student in the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University
Trace comprises a body of work that explores the individuality of unidentified human remains. As an artist Katie’s approach is though creative practice, questioning the boundaries between being and not being, existing and not existing as well as the borders between these spaces. Can we acknowledge a previous existence in a way that cares, without simply being a number on a database? Memory is held within belongings, the smell of the person, the stain or mark left after a memorable event. There is so much held within these items and it is this that recognises the life lived. In death our senses seek the bodily imprint left, captured and preserved to maintain a physical connection. This transformation is subtle and immediate and brings to mind ideas of relics as a form of sacred memory and healing.
Katie’s work explores ideas of absence and presence, the impressions left after interactions or brief encounters and asks the viewer to question how we consider, think about and remember the lives that were lived by unidentified human remains. Subjects of KAtie’s work includes homeless people in the UK, and vicitms of geonocide in Rwanda
