Kate Forer

Kate Forer (they/she) is an visual artist and writer working between Wisconsin and Illinois. Forer received a BA in Art and Art History from Southern Illinois University - Carbondale and an MFA in Fine Arts from University of Wisconsin - Madison. Currently, their practice focuses on soft sculpture and costume as tools for storytelling. To Forer, narrative is a lens to understand the world through, from pop culture to fanfiction, epic myth to the anecdotal. Costumes, props, and objects blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality, acting as evidence of imagined or exaggerated events. Forer is interested in tragicomic stories, enmeshed in modernity, social dysfunction, complex bodies and identities, and hyperbole. They pull inspiration from internet subcultures, ad-saturated visual landscapes, self-indulgent classical references, and cringey biographic episodes. Across all media, Forer prioritizes comedy and levity as important aesthetic elements; at its best, humor cuts through barriers and makes the complicated and upsetting easier to confront.