Katarina Wong is first-generation American artist, writer, and educator. Her artwork and her writing merge themes from her parents’ respective Chinese and Cuban homelands as a way to understand the immigrant experience and her own cultural inheritances.
Katarina's artwork has been shown nationally and internationally, including at the Chinese American Museum and California African Art Museum, both in LA as part of the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, El Museo Del Barrio, The Bronx Museum, The Fowler Museum in LA, the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, and Fundacion Canal in Madrid, Spain, and the Coral Gables Art Museum in Miami.
Katarina’s writing has been published in numerous outlets including The Miami Herald, The New York Daily News, Entrepreneur, as well as literary journals, academic publications, and art blogs (see the Writing section for links to her pieces). She is currently working on a memoir about how a renovation in Cuba led her to reconnecting with her cultural heritages.
Photo courtesy of Maria Lau
Having taught art at several universities and colleges, as well as a docent at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, Katarina believes creativity is part of everyone’s birthright—not just “artists.” Whether through drawing, painting, collage, or writing, she brings workshop participants together in brave spaces to explore and celebrate their creative selves.
Katarina has received numerous grants and awards including the Cintas Fellowship for Cuban and Cuban-American artists and a Pollock-Krasner grant, as well as residencies at Skowhegan; Ucross Foundation; Ragdale Foundation, the Kunstlerhaus in Salzberg, Austria; and the Open Art Residency in Eretria, Greece. Her work is in numerous private and public collections including the Scottsdale Museum of Art and the Frost Art Museum in Miami, FL. She has taught at the University of Iowa, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of Maryland.
Katarina has an MFA from the University of Maryland, a Master of Theological Studies in Buddhism from the Harvard Divinity School, and a BA in Classics from St. John's College, Annapolis, MD. She has also studied ceramics at the School of Visual Arts and Teachers College/Columbia University, along with creative writing at Gotham Writers Workshop, and Chinese language at Middlebury College.