ARTIST BIO
Carrie Kouts (1995) was born and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 2019, she received her BFA in sculpture from the University of Central Oklahoma. Currently she lives and works in Providence, RI, pursuing her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Kouts creates sculptural works by experimenting with discarded human-made materials and roadkill collected from her immediate surroundings. Her practice explores the indeterminate classifications that create divisions between human and non-human, natural and unnatural, scientific and instinctual.
Kouts' work has been exhibited in public and private venues, including the Oklahoma Contemporary for ArtNow 21', 21C Museum Hotel as an Elevate artist, the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, and as a spotlight artist in Momentum OKC, where she was honored with the viewer's choice award. Beyond her artistic endeavors, Kouts is deeply committed to Urban Ecology research and conservation efforts, collaborating with experts in entomology and mammalogy through citizen science programs in MA and RI.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My sculptural work is fashioned out of roadkill and discarded human-made materials. I am fascinated by how unwanted furniture, animal bodies, displaced belongings, and construction debris end up as the casualties of indeterminate categorization pushed into the space between natural and unnatural, existing outside of Outside. Rooted in the distrust of undefinable and transitory classifications, my experimental process allows me to playfully challenge the conventional divisions between human and non-human, organic and synthetic, scientific and instinctual. I consider the constantly shifting boundaries of these perceived binary classifications, questioning when and where our environment is defined and what our role is within or outside of ecological narratives. Natural history, folk taxonomy, museology, science, and fiction play equally necessary roles in my work by positioning each piece in ways that can disrupt euro-centric views of “naturalness.”