Break the Frame in Rhythms of Chance.
Dance. Dance. Dance.

—katnancy, 2026

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

hello, strangelings <3

I am katnancy. I was blessed to be born and raised by the rainforests and beaches of Gimuy, Yidinji Country, in so-called Australia. I am of the Cumti-Bihacon clan, a family tree rooted in the mountains of Ifugao in so-called The Philippines. Our family name Cumti means ‘fireflies’ in Tuwali-Ifugao, our ancestral dialect and my father’s first language he spoke while growing up on the homeland before moving to Manila where he learned Tagalog, then English when he immigrated to regional, so-called North Queensland.

As a teenager I named myself katnancy in an act of reclamation and self-definition after an abusive childhood in which my original birth name became traumatic to hear, as it had been said with such cruelty everyday of my life until at age 12 I gained the legal right to escape my abuser by choosing to live with my father instead. My chosen name honours my anglo, maternal grandmother, Nancy, who raised her two children in rural so-called North Queensland as a single mother after my grandfather left them. My father’s parents had passed before I was born and I was blessed that Nana Nancy, as the only grandparent in my life, was always kind to me.

I spent the majority of my twenties in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 Territory on Turtle Island (so-called North America). There I was amongst and taught by a rich network of artists and Indigenous women curators within a gift-economy-based network of non-heirarchical, transgenerational, collaborative, Matriarchal and BIPOC-led and/or queer-led learning environments. In my view, these lived experiences and genuine, lasting connections supersede in importance any of my formal training, qualifications or “achievements” as an artist and person. I measure the “success” of my own work, and life, by how well I honour the Spirit of these teachings by living them through me, gifting forward what has been gifted to me, holding open the gates of opportunity. The ripple effects are what matters, and these are immeasurable, and often unseen.

I practice photomedia, grounding in the materiality of experimental photography (drawing with light + chemistry), and expanding this into experimental film & video (time), site-responsive, participatory installation (space). Through these I live out my desire to break the frame and rip the script eg. cut, tear, scratch, lick, bite, burn, kiss¹, melt, rot, glitch², remix³ and re-member⁴ the photograph as an embodied act of rejecting socialised barriers produced by and for hegemonies through images. These become rituals to stay awake, and remember to remember the constructed and manipulative of nature of representation and perception, and their influence on determining value, power, priority and disposability. I consider the camera obscura / dark chamber / darkroom as womb space, and the photographic process as séance… making possible windows of communication and collaboration [art as invitation⁵] between worlds, and co-conceiving and midwifing new worlds that may not exist or be perceived without the photographic process (& all its interferences). The ritual repetition in experimental photo & animation processes conjures a rhythmic dance, mirroring the rhythmic visual incantations spoken/sung by the images (within, without, between, beyond themselves). Through sympoiesis with chance as an act of faith/suspension of disbelief, I surrender control, and the images begin to sing themselves into existence, transform, layer, obscure or retract themselves. I, in turn, Listen.

🌈♡ps. i hope you’ve been dancing.

2023-Present

2015-2022 (19-26)

Footnotes:

1. _{When I include kissing in this list, I’m considering the kiss as conscious protest and mutual disarmament. “[Heidi] Dorow described kissing as a blood pact. ‘Everyone in the world tells me to be afraid of you, and that you’re a danger,’ was how she described its rationale. Kissing someone refuted this. It was a way of saying, ‘I’m not afraid of you. I’m with you.’” Making Out, Making Change: The History of Queer Kiss-Ins by Stef Rubino —Jan 13, 2025} ↩︎
2. _{“Glitch Is Error
   We are the most fantastic and beautiful mistake. Never meant to survive, we are still here: an error in the algorithm. We are not empty signifiers, however; we are not dead-end hyperlinks. We reject the violent act of naming. We will reconfigure ourselves as we see fit. Modifying and recoding, we choose our own names, build our own families and communities, proudly fail in the present as we dream new futures.”— Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, Russel, L, 2020} ↩︎
3. _{“Glitch Is Remix
   Affirming our role in building new worlds, we will imagine, innovate, and remix. We will rearrange and repurpose by any means necessary, rendering what rises from this rebirth unrecognizable from the violence of its original. We will create fissures in the social and cultural algorithm as an active act of advocacy, advocating for the user, advocating for ourselves and advocating for one another.” — Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, Russel, L, 2020} ↩︎
4. _{“Filipino indigenous cultures and the concepts we borrow such as Kapwa and Loob are all primarily Land-based. University of the Philippines Humanities professor, Felipe de Leon, Jr. names Filipino culture as inherently shamanistic and animistic. The animist worldview asserts that all of creation is sacred. It is the role and function of the Babaylan to mediate between the world of the spirits and the human and non-human world and re-member for us the deep connectedness between worlds; thus suturing and healing the split in our psyche.” — Mendoza Strobel, L, 2010, BABAYLAN: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous, introduction here} ↩︎
5. _{“New worlds are born from invitations.” — McIntyre, L and Cumti, k, 2024, like a fire we gather round: Phytograms, Ecologies, and Multivocal Agency} ↩︎