Kai Wasikowski is an artist based on Gadigal Land, working across photography, video and sculpture. As a child of photographers/environmentalists with British, German and Polish settler ancestry, his practice is inspired by the relationship between the natural environment and the photographic image—a preoccupation formed alongside rapidly increasing ecological degradation and technological development since his early childhood. Kai’s projects have engaged predominantly with western traditions of landscape photography and its use in colonial optics, with an interest in how the camera and various spatial imaging technologies prescribe ways of seeing whilst simultaneously constructing an unseen. Employing elements of trompe l'oeil, various imaging technologies and printing techniques, he hopes to use photography to question western visual/political systems of knowledge, and to spark feelings of curiosity and connectedness towards the powerful lives of images.
Kai received his Bachelor of Visual Arts (First Class Honours with University Medal) from the University of Sydney (2016) and his Masters of Fine Arts in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design (2023). Wasikowski’s work has been featured on the cover of Art Monthly Australasia, and written about in Artist Profile, Art Collector, VAULT Magazine & the Australian Financial Review. He is a recipient of the Schenberg Art Fellowship (2017), the American Australian Association AusArt Scholarship (2020), and the Marten Bequest Scholarship (2021). Wasikowski has exhibited in Australia, Berlin, Auckland, Singapore and New York.