Bio

Laura Kikauka Biography 2018 Latvian version

Laura Kikauka was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1963.

Laura Kikauka’s body of work over the past twenty-eight years encompasses various media including site specific installation, mixed media, electronic sculpture, drawing, photography, video, performance, music, text and costume creations. Kikauka’s  installations establish a highly specific visual (and often audio) language that blends the increasingly overlapping worlds of high and low art forms. In general Laura’s ‘excessive aesthetic’ is comparable to urban archeology and addresses issues of consumer culture, and the question of good and bad taste. It also celebrates failure in a humourous and ironic manner.

Kikauka’s work is inspired and derived from decades of on-going collecting of found objects. Employing the formal strategy of meticulously sorting and organizing these objects, as well as modifying or transforming them, she then creates specifically themed and coded installations that transform gallery and exhibition spaces into densely packed, highly detailed installations.

Laura’s categorization speaks of similarities and differences. The Funny Farm studios in rural Meaford and in Berlin are living and working spaces treated as on-going installations that exemplify, through a density of detail her interest in low class consumer culture. It is with a sense of sarcasm and empathy that she explores this reoccurring theme.

She has had solo exhibitions at the Power Plant, Toronto, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Haus der Kunst, Munich, MAK Museum, Vienna, and group shows at the Schirn Kunstalle, Frankfurt, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover.