Artworks / Wolfucker

The wolf is a symbol across cultures – throughout the world, it is respected, feared or reviled; it is alternately hunter, warrior, ancestor and god; protector, destroyer or teacher; coldblooded, loyal, and cunning. As Wolfucker, Kate embraces the myriad of its personalities and her own dualism. Is she hunter or prey? Wolf or mare? Taut and uncomfortable, the anxiety of an unseen and eternal enemy permeates the work with a suffocating and intimate tension.

Part of the larger series Chernobyl Spring 1986, which explores the artist’s coming of age in the mid-1980’s, the digital collages that comprise Wolfucker examine recurring themes of sexual recklessness versus societal repression and personal choice versus the rules of the pack. The young lovers of Chernobyl have been replaced by a series of current self-portraits in which the artist reflects on her own dark sexual history – when did the act of recklessness became more important than the act? At what point did sexual participation become part of a larger performance?