Katharina Fitz
Senior Technician
New Materials
My name is Katharina Fitz. Since 2023, I have led the Biomaterials Workshop at NTU and have worked as a fine artist for over ten years. I studied Photography and Film at the Sant Ignasi Institute in Barcelona and completed an MFA in Fine Art at NTU in 2019.In my work I question the value of objects in a mass-produced, slick, and highly mechanised world, embracing imperfection, the residual and its dusty tones. Turning, pushing, pulling, ramming, peeling and dragging form part of my visual vocabulary, revealing the energy and expressive qualities of materials. I am drawn to elements that are unseen, hidden, stripped away, or overlooked. These might include overspills of materials, seam lines of casts, or the traces left behind in acts of doing and undoing. They are usually seen as by-products and discarded, whereas in my work I acknowledge these imperfections as an integral part of the work.
The work I am presenting explores ways of collapsing and rebuilding form in an ad-hoc, experimental manner. Imperfections and seam lines are emphasised, with pinching points becoming places of tension that hold, support, and generate structure and volume. The pieces question our expectations of pot aesthetics in ceramics and how a vessel’s shape immediately implies function. These sculptures resist functionality, instead foreground fragility, irregularity, and the precarious process of assembly.
“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” Brené Brown