Kat is a curator and writer focusing on interdisciplinary contemporary art. She creates exhibitions that reimagine societal canons and redistribute perceived hierarchies. Kat prioritizes interpretive opportunities that utilize nontraditional strategies with a particular emphasis on somatics and play alongside and with contemporary art. Kat’s writing interrogates similar themes, focusing on visual critical theory, intersectionalism, and postcolonialism in contemporary art and cultural criticism.
Kat holds a Master of Arts degree in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art History with concentrations in Curatorial Studies and Book Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2020 and 2021, Kat was the Curatorial Fellow at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Currently, she serves as the Director of Art Exhibitions and Outreach at the University of Southern Maine. Kat is a 2023 Writer-in-Residence at Hewnoaks and also sits on the Portland Public Art Committee.
She recently mounted the exhibition Embodying Softness/Excavating Delight with artists Jackie Milad and Libby Paloma at the University Art Gallery. She is in the planning stages for under/current with artist Stephanie Garon, opening in October 2024.
email: katzagaria at gmail dot com
pronouns: she | her
Land acknowledgment
Kat Zagaria acknowledges and gives respect to the land that Portland now claims. She is thankful to reside on this land bordered by the ocean and its mountains, with the Wolastoq river to its north and abundant forests throughout. Most importantly, she honors and offers her gratitude to the first people who lived in this area. She recognizes the Abenaki people and the Wabanaki Confederacy as original and ongoing inhabitants of this unceded land. We live, love, work, play on, and share these lands.
A descendent of Italian Immigrants, Zagaria acknowledges the participation of the larger Italian-American diaspora in the project of whiteness. She recognizes the assimilation, colonization, and trauma her bloodlines have caused and works to ameliorate and undo harm wherever she encounters it. As part of righting these wrongs, Zagaria encourages donations to the Native Arts and Culture Fund.
Land acknowledgments require action as well as words. Zagaria is an activist curator working within institutions inherently built on a colonialist framework. She is committed to the struggle against systems of oppression that dispossessed Indigenous people of their territories, systems that remain embedded in museums today. She strives to dismantle these systems by starting anew and implementing healing and community practices in her exhibitions, as well as in her personal and professional capacities.
