Kate Warren

Artist Statement

My work explores queerness as a liberatory framework for confronting intergenerational repression and the grief of enforced silences. Rooted in my experience of coming out in my thirties, I use photography, performance, writing, and installation to investigate gender as an evolving act, building counter-archives that resist erasure while making space for joy, intimacy, and collective care. My trauma-informed, collaborative process prioritizes consent, trust, and reciprocal image-making, centering queer embodiment through costuming, gesture, and gaze. At Marble House Project, I will continue Undergrowth Archive, a research-driven project exploring the social ecologies of LGBTQ+ Vermonters through collaborative photographs, interviews, and archival engagement. Influenced by queer ecology, the project understands rural queer networks as interdependent systems of kinship, mutuality, and resilience. Partnering with elders at a historic lesbian land nonprofit, community organizations, and local archives, I aim to create images and narratives that honor vulnerability, expand belonging, and imagine queer life beyond survival—toward recognition, connection, and transformation.

Kate Warren, Good Ole Boys, archival inkjet print, 2023 Self-portrait performance documentation

Bio

Kate Warren (b. 1988) is a queer artist, community organizer, and educator raised in Vermont and based in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her artwork uses photography, installation, quilting, and performance to interrogate how we perform the self, intimacy, and fosters belonging through interpersonal abundance. Her trauma-informed, narrative approach is shaped by over a decade as a photographer working with The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Harper’s Bazaar, alongside value-aligned institutions including Planned Parenthood and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum. Community building through teaching and service underpins Warren’s practice. She co-founded and directs Golden Kin, an LGBTQ+ artist residency on a regenerative farm, where she facilitates residencies, cultural programming, salons, and hands-on workshops designed to combat creative isolation, share skills and resources, and expand access to the arts. Warren’s work has been exhibited at the California Museum of Photography, Light Work, and the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and recognized by American Photography, the Lucie Foundation, and the British Journal of Photography. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University, where she has taught Art Photography and coached the Alexia Fall Workshop. She works as Editorial and Outreach Director at ecology non-profit Toolshed, co-directs the Central NY Pride Parade, and serves on the OUT Hudson board.

www.katewarren.co