My installation, “Your grief is welcome here” using repeated star bodies and other Earth elements, had space to climb up the wall, thanks to curators Yasmeen Abdullah and Robert Goldkind.
I installed my piece, Black brown earth riot and golden (2023) in the gallery of the Arab American National Museum. It’s now part of their permanent collection, accessible to the public.
I will be spending two months in Michigan, as an artist in residence at the Arab American National Museum this summer. The residency will be a great opportunity for me to continue exploring how to translate embodiment and movement into public art that connects human presence with land, in a project called Iteru. I will be leading a workshop with the local Dearborn community as part of this research.
Excited to experiment with Yvonne Shortt in April, at the Museum for Contemporary Artists (Bronx location). For this self-selected open call, Yvonne invites artists to talk with her about power dynamics in the art world. We will spend a day sharing space and collaborating on these discussions with movement, wire, rope, paint, drawing, paper.
Thank you to Erie Arts and Culture for inviting me in so warmly, as a resident artist, where I piloted a movement and drawing workshop with members of the creative community. This work will continue to inform my explorations of integrating movement with figurative abstraction for public art and co-creating space.
Erie, PA
Feb 2023
Brooklyn, NY
Feb 4- Mar 4, 2023
I was selected to be part of the 2022 cohort of residents at Chautauqua School of Art this summer. This fully funded residency was an incredible opportunity to work and play with an intergenerational group of amazing artists from all over the U.S. and the world. It also allowed me to make installation work again, try movement experiments, and try printmaking for the first time.
In the studio at Chautauqua, I was happy to make installation again.
For Eve’s Garden, a four-panel mural is up in Brooklyn, at the corner of Bedford and Church Ave. The mural was done to commemorate an African Burial Ground that exists on this land. Local residents of Flatbush have formed Fabg Coalition to raise awareness of this history, calling for community control of the grounds, despite the city’s call to build affordable housing here. The mural went up in solidarity with the Coalition’s efforts and was created with support from the City Artist Corps 2021.
Bronx Calling: The Fifth AIM Biennial
The Bronx Museum
Bronx, NY
http://www.bronxmuseum.org/exhibitions/bronx-calling-the-fifth-aim-biennial
Nov 11, 2021- March 20, 2022
Breathing Through the Cracks of The Impossible Machine
Solo Exhibition at Trestle Gallery
Brooklyn, NY
Trestle Gallery is pleased to present Katherine Toukhy’s first solo exhibition, “Breathing Through the Cracks of The Impossible Machine…” In her life-size figurative cut-outs and animation (2018-2019) and her more recent collages Toukhy fuses subjective, mythical, and historical imagery to conjure a sense of corporeal and spiritual transformation…
Through collages with painted canvas, fabric, and paper, Toukhy creates layered pieces combining images of herself, female family members who sew, and women workers in the cotton industries. Women’s work in textile production and on cotton plantations, historically unrecognized and exploited both in the U.S. and in Egypt, provides a connecting legacy in which Toukhy also places herself, considering the high unemployment rate and gender pay gap present in the arts economy today.
She is inspired by both the (uncompensated) labor of love in the crochet work of her aunts and grandmothers and the struggles of women of color workers everywhere.
This exhibition was made possible with funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant.
Feb 13-27, 2021. Open by appointment through the trestle website. Ig Live walk through Sat Feb 13, 3pm. Artist talk Sun Feb 21, 3pm.
I spoke about my piece, Fire-laced, for the Creative Climate Awards. Hear the story of this painting in the 5 min interview: https://soundcloud.com/humanimpactsinstitute/katherine-toukhy-interview
Creative Climate Awards
Public installation 57 Willoughby St., Brooklyn, NY and online exhibit
Curated by Human Impacts Institute and guest curator, Betty Yu
The Human Impacts Institute (HII) today announced its 10th annual Creative Climate Awards (CCA) to help reinvigorate the city of New York with art and activism. In one of the most difficult years on record for both local artists and climate justice initiatives, the CCA has invited select cultural institutions from each of the five New York boroughs to send artists to perform, showcase, and enlighten this year’s audience…. In order to shed light on the issues of gentrification and inequity, all 15 artists have been chosen as representatives from five cultural organizations across New York: The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) from Brooklyn; Bronx Council on the Arts from the Bronx; Materials from the Arts from Queens; Chinatown Art Brigade from Manhattan; and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center from Staten Island. Featured artists include Kimberly M. Becoat, Kim Dacres, Joyce Hwang & Prathap Ramamurthy, Interference Archive, Annalisa Iadicicco, Jahtiek Long, Estelle Maisonett, Ruth Marshall, Siara Mencia, Tijay Mohammed, Katherine Patiño Miranda, Run P., Dianne Smith, Tattfoo Tan, and Katherine Toukhy.
November 15- December 15, 2020
One of my collages from the ongoing series, We are the fabric, for the 100 Years| 100 Women commission is featured in a Vogue magazine article about the project. This piece centers the poet and activist Sojourner Truth, who is to me the rock of what we today call intersectional feminism. She became foundational, as I re-mapped my way into the U.S. history of suffrage, as a daughter of Egyptian immigrants, for this commission.
100 Years| 100 Women
The Park Ave Armory and POC-led arts organizations across NYC co-commission 100 women artists to create works reflecting on the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 which guaranteed many (but not all) women the right to vote. The project is both a celebration and a critique, re-centering voices of color in this historic narrative.
I was very honored to be co-commissioned by The Laundromat Project, along with Abby Dobson, LaTasha Nevada Diggs, Karinia Aguilera Skvirsky, and Jaime Sunwoo, to share work.
Because of Covid, the 100 Years| 100 Women became an online archive featuring all 100 artists’ works and was launched with the video portrait above weaving together all our voices, directed by Shola Lynch.
August 2020
Rhea Nayyar reviews The Khayamiyya Monument: an alternate war monument for Arcade Project. Her review of our show Expect Some Discomfort:
The female veterans were forced to focalize and respond to the (anonymous) migrant women’s experiences, confronting the reality of resulting civilian strife and sexism that entailed during their involvement with the U.S. military forces. The vulnerability exhibited by the migrant and refugee women who opened up about their traumatic experiences matches that of the female veterans who admitted to the faults of their contribution to the unjust U.S. foreign involvement amidst a culture of staunch, unrelenting patriotism.
August, 2020
Expect Some Discomfort
Yeon Ji Yoo, Katherine Toukhy, Nestor Perez-Moliere, Gina Goico, Dominique Duroseau, Dennis Redmoon Darkeem, Mitsuko Brooks, Chloe Bass
Empty Set Gallery, Bronx, NY
Online Exhibition curated by David Rios Ferreira
In preparing for this exhibition I realized something I’ve known for a long time—artists are no stranger to the “cringing moment.” Each artist featured in Expect Some Discomfort leans into vulnerability as a pathway to change and healing. They engage with their own vulnerability and help others to find theirs, in order to create these pathways. Instead of just exhibiting the end product of this journey, their work often reveals the trials, difficulties, and challenges these pathways may lead to or have originated from. - David Rios Ferreira
July 9-30, 2020
Visiting Artist Residency at Trestle Gallery
I will have a studio here and will be running a critique session open to any local artist on the first Tuesday of every month. Sign up through the Trestle website.
Brooklyn, NY
https://www.trestlegallery.org/residencies
Jan- Fall 2020
BRIC Media Fellows Screening
Feli Maynard, Dakota Gearhart, Wendell McShine, Keisha Scarville, Katherine Toukhy, Cecile Chong, Maya Jeffries, Jasmine Murrell, Beck Haberstroh, Cori Olinghouse, Whitney Ramage, and Caroline Carlsmith
Sunken Sunbeats, my first stop-motion animation, was premiered here. The work was completed with the support of BRIC.
BRIC, Brooklyn, NY
Sept 23, 2019
Figuring the Floral
Derrick Adams, Nicole Awai, Bahar Behbahani, Christian Ruiz Berman, Sanford Biggers, Cecile Chong, Max Colby, Abigail DeVille, Valerie Hegarty, Christopher K. Ho and Kevin Zucker, Diana Lozano, Natalia Nakazawa, Ebony G. Patterson, Bundith Phunsombatlert, Lina Puerta, Simonette Quamina, David Rios Ferreira, Alexandria Smith, Katherine Toukhy, Lina Iris Viktor, William Villalongo and Saya Woolfalk
Wave Hill, Bronx, NY
Curated by Eileen Jeng
A flower’s life cycle of budding, blooming and pollinating, as well as its process of decay, strongly echoes the human condition. The exhibition Figuring the Floral features artists who apply this symbolism to their work—touching on race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, aging and other facets of identity.
https://www.wavehill.org/calendar/figuring-the-floral
July 21- Dec 1 2019
Arab/Indigenous: Palestinian, Indigenous North African, and Arab/Native Art
A Multidisciplinary Panel
Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Micaela Kaibni Raen, Katherine Toukhy, Rasha Abdulhadi
AWP Conference (Association of Writers and Writing Programs)
Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon
Recognizing the importance of constellating Arab diaspora art in multiple ways, including through immigrant/refugee and pan-Asian/African lenses of experience, this panel argues for a creative, critical, pedagogical, and publishing re-evaluative centering of Indigenous Arab realities by placing in dialogue womanist/queer/trans Palestinian, Indigenous North African, and mixed-race Arab/Native American artists, activists, and editors.
-Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran
March 27-30, 2019
BRIC Media Fellowship 2019
Feli Maynard, Dakota Gearhart, Wendell McShine, Keisha Scarville, Katherine Toukhy, Cecile Chong, Maya Jeffries, Jasmine Murrell, Beck Haberstroh, Cori Olinghouse, Whitney Ramage, and Caroline Carlsmith
Brooklyn, NY
Media fellows are granted access to media classes and equipment at BRIC for one year to create an original video piece screened the following fall.
BAM 50 State Initiative Art Project
#forfreedoms
The Plaza at 300 Ashland, Brooklyn, NY
BAM invites you to participate in a new all-inclusive, collaborative civic art project in partnership with For Freedoms. Led by Brooklyn artist Katherine Toukhy, this interactive event is activated by you and other members of the community, offering a unique sphere where creating and sharing social and political statements is an integral component of the final work.
Public engagement piece: October 20, 2018 1-3 pm
Part Three Permanent Collection
Williamsburg Art and Historical Society, Brooklyn, NY
Curated by Yuko Nii
The exhibition brings together older and more recent works by artists in the WAH permanent collection.
October 20- November 18
Black Love Fest NYC
Sugar Hill Children's Museum, Harlem, NY
I was invited by The Black School to create an installation for this one-day festival, including many other artists. It was a circular tent with a projection of dance associated with healing rituals and words by Audre Lorde. Kids activated the space with their own sounds and movement.
https://www.sugarhillmuseum.org/calendar/2018/8/19/playdate-features-black-love-fest-nyc
August 19, 2018
Home Front
Lauren Francis Adams, Aisha Cousins, Katherine Toukhy, Goldar Adili, Lorena Molina, Maya Jeffereis
Old Stone House, Brooklyn
Curated by Katherine Gressel
A prevailing theme in this work is the idea of home itself, and by extension preserving associated cultural and familial traditions, as a political act in places where one is made to feel unwelcome or invisible (i.e. due to race, class, or immigration status), especially during times of transition or loss. -Katherine Gressel
http://theoldstonehouse.org/event/homefront/
April 19- June 24 2018
Bronx Museum Artists in the Marketplace Fellowship
Hon Eui Chen, Po-Yen Wang, Emily Chow Bluck, Isabella Cruz-Chong, Francisco Donoso, Shane Morrissey, Victoria-Idongesit Udondian, Katherine Toukhy, Cay Yoon, Raphael Fenton-Spaid, Keith Burns, Estelle Maisonett, Jennifer Grimyser, Jack Hogan, Carlos Jimenez Cahua, Eunjung Park, Catalina Schleibener, Jose Delgado Zuniga
Spring 2018 cohort
This competitive fellowship brings together a cohort of emerging NYC artists for professional development workshops and studio visits, culminating with a group show at the Bronx Museum. For several reasons, including COVID, the museum has decided to defer the 2018/19 cohorts’ show indefinitely.
INCISION
Camille Lee, Katherine, Toukhy, Christen Clifford, Chaya Babu
Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ
Curated by Rebecca Jampol and Jasmine Wahi
Katherine Toukhy’s soft-media installation explores body and identity within the context of statelessness and movement. Assembled in an aqueous wash of geographically ambiguous blues, her headless figures speak to the anonymity or erasure of humanity from the female form. Toukhy questions the repercussions of nationalistic violence, chaos, and upheaval as it pertains to the female form. -Jasmine Wahi
www.projectforemptyspace.org/incision/
artnet news: Editor's Picks 15 Things to See in New York This Week: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/editors-picks-january-29-1201628
January 31- March 23, 2018
BRIC Open C(all): TRUTH
BRIC, Brooklyn, NY
We live in an era when truth is under assault. In a time of alternative truths and truthiness, we ask that you show us your truth. What is real and true for you? The work exhibited explores the current political climate and social issues, interior realities, and truth within the spiritual and psychological dimensions of life.
www.bricartsmedia.org/art-exhibitions/o?
November 16- December 17
Multitudes: Art In The Age Of The #Muslimban
Leila Abdelrazaq, Saks Afridi, Bolo, Christopher Mir, Qinza Najm, Yasin Osman, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Katherine Toukhy
Richard Brush Gallery, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY
Curated by Saima Akhtar and Mona Damluji
The exhibition explores themes of solidarity and intersection within Muslim, black, brown, gender-based, refugee and immigrant communities and highlights the impossibility of defining any region, culture, or identity through a singular understanding. -Saima Akhtar and Mona Damluji
https://www.stlawu.edu/art-and-art-history/event/exhibition-muslim-experience
October 18- December 15th
Feminists in Residence
Camille Lee, Katherine Toukhy, Chaya Babu, Christen Clifford
Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ
In the upcoming months, the selected artists will work at the PES gallery in Newark, NJ, developing work that speaks to the incubator’s mission to address issues of female safety, gender roles, ownership, and agency.
www.projectforemptyspace.org/2018-femin?
October 2017- March, 2018
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center
September 2017
BRIC Summer Artist Residency
Nicole Awai, Esperanza Cortez, Katherine Toukhy, Lucia Cuba, Katya Grokhovsky, Monika Weiss, Pheobe Grip, Jamie Warren
BRIC, Brooklyn, NY
https://www.bricartsmedia.org/blog/meet-summer-2017-bricworkspace-artists-residence
June- August 2017
Summer Open Studios at BRIC
Wed August 2, 6-9 pm
Sanctuary: A public Dialogue
with artists: Salome Asega, Sal Munoz, Katherine Toukhy, Rasu Jilani, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and moderated by Saeed Jones
Rubenstein Auditorium, Lincoln Center, NY, NY
Alumni artists from The Laundromat Project’s Create Change artist development program will discuss how they share and hold spaces that help us evoke, articulate, and realize our most creative and collective dreams of refuge.
http://laundromatproject.org/sanctuary-lincoln-center/
Thursday March 9, 7:30 pm
Free and open to the public
This work, "Menace," is used for the cover of an Anthology by Sweet Action Poetry Collective. Proceeds from all anthology sales go to benefit Standing Rock.
I was interviewed by the Brooklyn Arts Council about The Khayamiyya Monument. The full interview can be found at this link:
https://bkartscouncil.tumblr.com/post/153041157318/veterans-day-interview-spotlight-bac-grantee
Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC): Could you describe Khayamiya Project, the community-based arts and culture project for which you received two Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Grants?
Katherine Toukhy: Recently I’ve been working on installations grounded in the collection of intimate writings and layered patterns. I use poetic prompts to ignite discussion and written responses from specific groups. Excerpts of these handwritten texts become elements of 2D and 3D collage. My latest work samples “herstories” created by female Arab im/migrants and United States veterans to co-create an alternate war monument. I see these works as unfolding embodied traumas around war, displacement, and immigration, unfolding towards transformation in the present…
The Khayamiyya Monument Launch
Two community open mic events at The Arab American Association, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Winter 2016
Sheherzade's Gift
Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Veiled women appear in various scales, from a large hand carved masonite sculpture by Kamal, to small graphite drawings by Nida Abidi and large watercolors by Katherine Toukhy. The bodies in their work occupy and become landscapes fraught with conflict, yet manage to retain poetry and beauty. The playfulness of Abidi and fragmentation Toukhy’s women are echoed in Meena Hasan’s paintings based on screen grabs of the Satyajit Ray film Charulata…Jaishri Abichandani
http://www.twelvegatesarts.org/exhibitions/2016/10/20/sheherzades-gift
October 20- November 26, 2016
And still she grows flowers in her flesh: New works by Alexandria Smith and Katherine Toukhy
Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Like Nayyirah Waheed, whose poem "A Genocide for Flowers" inspired the title for this exhibition, Alexandria Smith's and Katherine Toukhy's respective work responds to notions of multiple and developing identities.
July 17- August 7, Opening reception Sunday July 17, 4:30-7pm
Sheherzade's Gift
Nida Abidi, Nehar Ahkami, Fariba Salma Alam, Ambreen Butt, Ruby Chishti, Dahlia Elsayed, Roya Farassat, Miriam Ghani, Meena Hasan, Gita Hashemi, Mala Iqbal, Mona Saeed Kamal, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Sa'dia Rehman, Nooshin Rostami, Hiba Schahbaz, Negin, Sharifzadeh, Katherine Toukhy
Center For Book Arts, NY, NY
Curated by Jaishri Abichandani
centerforbookarts.org/event/sheherzades?
Roundtable discussions:
August 10, 6:30 pm
September 7, 6:30 pm
The Art of Herstory: Celebrating Women Artists of the African Diaspora
Mequitta Ahuja, Vinnie Bagwell, Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Nona Faustine, Pheobe Tree, Althea Brown, Beatrice Lebreton, Natasha Johnson, Chanel Kennebrew, Clymenza Hawkins, Colette Gaiter, Helen Ramsaran, Katherine Toukhy, Marlene Furtick, Nakeya Brown, Wilhemina Grant and many more
Skylight Gallery at Bedstuy Restoration Corporation & Welancora Gallery
Brooklyn, NY
This exhibition is concerned with exploring the evolution of the women artists of the African Diaspora by way of an intergenerational dialogue, that looks at the extent to which increased exposure and broader art world acceptance have served as a tool for raising awareness about the issues that affect women of the African Diaspora.
https://www.brooklyn-usa.org/bulletins-events/the-art-of-her-story/
March 18- Jun 18, Opening reception March 18 6-9 (at both venues)
a bad question: online exhibit in conjunction with tART Collective and Smoke School of Art
ongoing
Creative Dissent
With: Lucien Samaha, Farras Abdelnour, Negin Sharifzadeh, Ganzeer, Lia Mahmoudian, Katherine Toukhy, Issam Khourbaj, Amina Ahmed
Alwan for the Arts, NY, NY
Curated by Nama Khalil and Christiane Gruber
The experience of how aspirations for freedom and justice merge with artistic expression – capturing the anger, elation, frustration, and hope of these revolutions in the form of graffiti, video, blog postings, cartoons, music, photography and even puppetry – are on display to highlight the universality of the quest but in local vernaculars.
Bay Ridge SAW presents "You broke the ocean in half" made in collaboration with women at the Arab American Association, synthesizing their writings and paintings into this collage portrait.
Public Faculty no.9
Queens Museum and selected public spaces, Queens, NY
With a team of selected artists and organizers in Queens, and under the facilitation of Jeanne van Heeswijk, we plan a series of on-street interactions to engage people with the question "Do you feel connected?".
Paperworks Unbound
Williamsburg Art and Historical Society
Brooklyn, NY
Awarded one of ten best works by Claire Gilman, Director of the Drawing Center: http://wahcenter.net/2014/10/the-10-award-recipients-of-the-over-the-edge-paperworks-unbound-show/
Queens Art Invervention
The Living Museum
Collaboration with Floor Grootenhuis
Jackson Heights, Queens
With Floor Grootenhuis, we host an outdoor interactive museum, where residents are invited to make a paper replica of an object that represents them and display it in a street museum. The temporary collection embodies a slice of this living community.
Are We Already Gone?
FlickerLabs
78 Crosby St, Suite 203, New York, NY
Curated by Negin Sharifzadeh
Sept 21-28
Reception Sept 21, 5-9 pm
Artificial Romance
A solo pop-up installation
Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Artificial Romance is a temporary installation of Katherine Toukhy’s drawings and mixed media works. Navigating the myths and political realities of “artificial romance” - or the American need for an Egyptian exotic and the Egyptian need for authoritarianism in the midst of revolutionary change- Toukhy creates multilayered hybrid forms to shed these stereotypes .
August 2014
Mujeres
Villa Victoria, Boston, MA
Curated by Anabel Vazquez
RASMI: Arts empowerment program for Arab or Muslim youth in Brooklyn
I founded art education initiatives in Brooklyn community centers to create safe space for local. young people of Arab, African, or Muslim descent to explore their identities through creative expression. The workshops culminated in a public exhibit each summer and were funded by the Brooklyn Arts Council and a crowdfunding campaign.
Summers 2013-2015