Bre Pettis

Kate the Cursed

Kate the Cursed is the working name of Katherina Jesek (b. 1999), a New York artist — Cold Spring, up the Hudson — who makes images the hard way: on cathode-ray tubes and oscilloscopes, with analog video and practical in-camera effects, steeped in the cyberpunk and vaporwave of the decades just before her. Publishing as Kate the Cursed since 2019, she has shown from Czechia to Montreal, sold a GIF at Sotheby's ("Glitch: Beyond Binary," 2023), and appeared in the Museum of the Moving Image's "Refreshing the Loop" (2023). I met Kate through KinoSaito, our local arts center, and caught her show at the Peekskill branch of Westchester Community College: she messes with ancient TV drawing electronics and then takes photographs of them, and I can't wait to see what she does as her career continues. Her amber-phosphor abstractions are photographs of 8-bit artworks alive on analog screens — the glow is real.

Artist's website (katethecursed.com) ↗

2 physical works