KATRINA VERA WONG

Sculpture, Collage, Found Objects, Plant Material

City: Vancouver, British Columbia

Website: http://www.furiebeckite.com/

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/furiebeckite/

Artist Statement: I make flowers called Frankenflora — imagined hybrids that are pieced together from parts of dried or pressed plants. Where it’s genetically impossible to combine several species or genera, my work mimics the technique Dr. Frankenstein used to create his being.

Initially, my flowers resembled those pressed and mounted onto herbarium sheets, but they eventually peeled themselves off the page, seeming as though I’d just plucked them from the earth. Informed by literature, herbaria, botany, ikebana, and grief, some flowers are arranged on independent stems, while others may find accompaniment in a miniature vase, trinket box, monograph, or poem.

Frankenflora (with its variations given binomial names) tend to highlight parts of plants that are usually hidden or ignored by placing them in a new context at a new angle. Leaves become petals, branches become roots, or even become a new structure. That these flowers are genetically impossible is a fact, but it has opened doors to what my practice can create.

Biography: Katrina Vera Wong is a Korean-Chinese artist, writer, and editor. Learning from literature, botany, herbaria and ikebana, she makes hybrid flowers from dried or pressed plants and calls them Frankenflora. She currently writes about sciart as a subject editor at Science Borealis, proofreads SAD Mag, and blogs at Lifeology. She also created Seagery Zine, a small annual print publication that explores the overlap between art, science and literature.

Her Frankenflora have been exhibited in Vancouver, BC, at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Science World, and the VIVO Media Arts Centre.

Katrina was born in Hamilton, ON (traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabeg), raised in Singapore, and is grateful to be living on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She graduated from the University of Victoria with a BSc in Biology and English.