Entry Title: " ELEMENTARZ "
Name: Karolina Karlic, United States
Category: Professional, Industrial


Entry Description: My most recent series, ELEMENTARZ (2010), tracks the reach of the U.S. auto industry (stretching from Detroit to California to Eastern Europe, where my father implemented new industrial plants) while depicting the efforts at communication between engineer father and artist daughter. Both images and excerpts of conversation allude to fractured ideologies of individual worth, religion and family, while signs of car culture mixed with evidence of economic plight recur. A mood of longing pervades ELEMENTARZ, coupled with absentminded dreaming, characteristic of both Eastern European immigrants and African Americans of the Great Migration.
Karlic is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship 2011 which will enable her to continue to further investigate the representation of American culture, more specifically immigrant emplacement and diasporic existence surrounding the auto industry. She holds a BFA in Photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design 2005 and a MFA in Photography and Media from the California Institute of Arts 2010

In search of the American Dream, my family immigrated to Detroit in 1987 when my father fled communist Poland to work in the auto industry. From this uprooted childhood, my practice concentrates on the human effects of social upheaval: Close to Home (2005) focuses on Ukraine’s post Soviet conditions; The Dee (2007) depicts Detroit’s de-industrialization; Dear Diary (2008) explores one online community searching for companionship; What Color is the Sacred (2009), sponsored by Tim Wride and the French Consulate, examines Western views of French Polynesia and the “re-birth” of Tahitian culture. My most recent series, ELEMENTARZ (2010), tracks the reach of the U.S. auto industry (stretching from Detroit to California to Eastern Europe, where my father implemented new industrial plants) while depicting the efforts at communication between engineer father and artist daughter. Both images and excerpts of conversation allude to fractured ideologies of individual worth, religion and family, while signs of car culture mixed with evidence of economic plight recur. A mood of longing pervades ELEMENTARZ, coupled with absentminded dreaming, characteristic of both Eastern European immigrants and African Americans of the Great Migration. With this work I was most recently awarded the 2011 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography.