Photographie, impression au jet d’encre et cadre d’artiste sur mesure, 2024
The Tailor is part of a series of photographs in which Kraven arranges collected offcuts from local fashion designers into compositions that sort and shift fabric that is not meant to become clothing. These scraps drift in the periphery; the contours and transparency index an absent body, a body that refuses its confines, and a body remembered. The frame is custom-designed for each photograph and made by hand to mimic the curves, notches, and cuts of the found scraps.
Karen Kraven is a Montréal-based artist working with photography, sculpture, and installation. Influenced by her father’s (and his father’s) knitting factory, which stopped manufacturing the year that she was born, and by her mother’s pursuit of fashion design, she has recently investigated the garment-making process, exploring the ways in which clothing registers the body to point to the sustained impact of work and wear.
Recent solo exhibitions include Bloemenlust at Oakville Galleries, Fray at Galerie Nicholas Robert (Toronto), Le Chiffonnier at AXENÉO7 (Gatineau), Hoist at PLATFORM Centre (Winnipeg), Lull at Latitude 53 (Edmonton), Dust Against Dust at Parisian Laundry (Montréal), and Pins & Needles at Toronto Sculpture Garden. Her work is in the collections of the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Windsor-Essex, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Group, National Bank, Deloitte, and several private collections.