Photograph by Blaine Davis.
Is anyone keeping track of which feminist wave we’re in? Fourth or fifth at least. Perhaps we’ve lost count. But one thing is for sure: Katie Stout is surfing it like a pro. To see where gender politics is nowadays, you can do no better than her darkly funny, vibrantly energetic works, which somehow manage to project both faux naivete and worldly wisdom. Like Misha Kahn, with whom she is close—they both attended the Rhode Island School of Design and have shared studio space—she often works with the detritus of pop culture, embracing it with ironic verve (last year she made the triumphal Arc de Trash).
As Stout unfurls her designs for furniture, fashion, wallpaper, ceramics, and much else besides, you can scarcely keep up with the ideas and references—though there is more than a splash of Niki de Saint Phalle in there, evident in the brazen, busty, raunchy, joyous female archetypes that populate her work.
Fruit Lady floor lamp in ceramic. Designed and made by Katie Stout, USA, 2021.
16" L x 32" W x 68.5" H
40.6cm L x 81.3cm W x 174cm H
FL460