Karen Adelman is an artist, vocalist, writer, and educator from New York. She trained for many years as a singer on the East Coast before she started making video and sculptural installations that investigate the strange, reciprocal relationships of our bodies to each other and to and the spaces they inhabit. She moved to Los Angeles to study at USC (MFA 2012) and began performing live pieces that mix pop and classical music references with material explorations of vibration and resonance, using texts, voice, movement, costumes, sculpture, and video. After returning to New York in 2015 to be near family and teach more, she gave up trying to separate the various strands of her different practices. In all mediums, she tries to create spaces and moments that inspire unusual connections and stimulate new pathways; her work lives in the overlap where sense and the senses switch places.
Karen has vocalized for and collaborated with many artists including Liz Glynn, Dawn Kasper, Trisha Baga, Lindsay August-Salazar, Jmy James Kidd, and William Earl Kofmehl III, in performances at institutions such as MoMA PS1, Issue Project Room Brooklyn, Machine Project LA, and MASS MoCA. In her education work, she has taught and presented at a wide array of organizations including the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the Moving Image, and Awake Youth Project at Brooklyn Zen Center.
Press:
Recent Encounters With Karen Adelman and Flora Weigmann, Another Righteous Transfer
Visual Artist Captures the Art of Singing, Trojan Family Magazine