Katherine Toukhy
Katherine Toukhy lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She was a BRIC Media Arts Fellow and exhibited in “Figuring the Floral” at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY. In 2017-2018, she was an artist-in-residence at BRIC; The Project for Empty Space; a Pollack-Krasner fellow at Vermont Studio Center; and she completed the Bronx Museum of the Arts AIM Program. In 2017, Toukhy was a commissioned artist invited by the Laundromat Project to co-present on the theme of “Sanctuary” at Lincoln Center’s Rubenstein Auditorium for her work, “The Khayamiya Monument,” an alternate war monument of the herstories of African and Arab women im/migrants and female U.S. veterans. Select shows also include: “Incision” at the Project For Empty Space, NJ (2018); “Truth” at BRIC, Brooklyn (2017); “Shehrezade’s Gift” at the Center for Book Arts, NY (2016); “Creative Dissent” at Alwan for the Arts, NY (2016); and “Artificial Romance” a solo show at Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn (2014). She has presented her work at the Arab American National Museum and Charles Wright Museum of African American History in Michigan among others. She is the fourth time recipient of Brooklyn Arts Council grants, a Rema Hort Mann Foundation ACE Grant, and a Puffin Foundation grant. Toukhy’s works are included in private collections in Brooklyn, Cairo, and the Yuko Nii Permanent Collection of the Williamsburg Art and Historical Society.
Get to know Katherine Toukhy
Please tell us of an artist, curator, activist, or project that has influenced you or inspired you?
There are so many. Currently looking at a lot of street art, very inspired by the wave of street art in Cairo post-revolution and all I see here on the streets of Brooklyn. Very excited to see Swoon’s new mural in LES and her opening at Brooklyn Museum.
Please tell us about a place in your neighborhood that is personally meaningful to you, and why?
Right now the area across the street from me is hugely symbolic for me. It was a lot with a semi-abandoned church, which within the space of two weeks, has been boarded up and is being demolished piece by piece. They are building a condo complex across the street and the roof of the church has been hacked in—the steeple just collapsed into the roof. Every day there are men on the roof axing it up. The wall around it has started to become a graffiti wall.
What is your favorite book, film or song about NYC?
My favorite film about NYC is Beat Street, hands down. Great scenes, music, art, characters. Great documentation of the beginnings of an underground art scene in an NYC that was.
If you have an idea of a blog post or topic you’d like to contribute to our blog, please share below!
I think there is a lot that needs to be demystified about being an artist. And also this divide the professional world makes between being a teaching artist and an artist. It might be good to do a post about how these two roles feed each other and maybe include ideas about the necessities of organizing for our rights as both artists and teaching artists.
Do you have a blog of your own or a blog portion of your website that you’d like to share with us? If so, what is the web address for your blog?
I’ve been meaning to start a blog about the proliferation of Egyptian kitsch in hip hop, pop culture, Afrofuturism. What does it all mean? How is it perceived from the perspective of an Egyptian American? Is it cultural appropriation? But for now, you can see some samples of my writings here: http://katherinetoukhy.com/links.html