Katie Shapiro
Katie Shapiro’s (b. 1983, Los Angeles, CA) practice explores the ineffable—making visible what cannot be seen. Her most recent work reflects her ongoing investigation into perception, presence, and what lies beyond view. The artist writes:
“Through my work, I aim to create evocative, multi-layered pieces that reflect the complexity of human existence across personal, historical, and cosmic dimensions. I combine my photographic practice with sculptural elements, blurring the lines between image and object, surface and structure. This material expansion allows me to craft immersive environments that challenge conventional boundaries and invite a more tactile, spatial engagement with visual media.
“Sculpture, for me, is not simply about form—it is a way of embodying the unseen. By integrating photography with physical materials such as wood, obsidian, and mirrors, I explore how material presence can hold and transmit intangible states: memory, emotion, energy, and psychological depth. The works often draw from natural topographies—energy vortices, impact craters, high mountain elevations—which act as metaphors for the internal landscapes we all carry. These geologic markers mirror our own transformations, holding space for rupture, resilience, and rebirth.
“Motherhood has profoundly shaped my artistic inquiry. It has attuned me more acutely to the liminal, intuitive, and cyclical aspects of life—the quiet, often unseen labor of care and creation. As both a personal and archetypal experience, motherhood introduces an expanded awareness of time, space, and bodily knowledge. It offers a lived experience of duality: being both self and other, grounded and dissolving, nurturing and fiercely protective. This duality echoes in my work, where form and image coalesce to explore the unconscious currents that flow beneath everyday reality.”
Shapiro holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and a BFA in Photography from CalArts.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, with recent and past shows at institutions including Aperture Gallery, Kopeikin Gallery, Klompching Gallery, Christopher Grimes Gallery, and The Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA. Her work has appeared in Artforum, The Los Angeles Times, and New York Magazine.
Her work is included in numerous private and public collections, notably the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Huntington Library and Art Collection, the California Museum of Photography in Riverside, and the Amon Carter Museum Library.
Shapiro has held residencies at the Banff Centre in Canada and Bullseye Glass in Pasadena, and is slated to attend Mass MoCA next summer as an artist-in-residence. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Featured Works
