The Magnetic Work of Katelyn Kopenhaver

September 2025

Katelyn Kopenhaver is not your typical artist. She doesn’t just create art, she rouses her viewers to delve into a world where she orchestrates incidents that disrupt the norm, tempting them to delve into a world where art becomes more about asking profound questions than finding straightforward explanations. Using printmaking, video, performance, and subversive installations, Katelyn unveils the distortion of certainty and the spectrum of predatory influences that shape our sense of reality and identity, leaving viewers to weigh where they get their facts and how much of their views, conclusions, and convictions are really their own.

Her upbringing in the historic town of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was not the familiar artist's journey. Her earliest understanding of form, rhythm, and nuance was not from a canvas but from the rhythmic thud of hooves against the earth. Competitive horseback riding was a significant part of her youth, readying her command, presence, and intuitiveness beyond words. That attentiveness stretches far beyond the stables.

Anyone who's crossed paths with Katelyn will mention her broad, radiant smile, unique sense of style, and a consciousness that seems to suspend behind her eyes. It's this instinctive awareness that pulses through her work, settling in the corners and gently tugging the onlooker into an area where thought unspools.

Kopenhaver's work is bookish and sharp. She recreates language the way some artists recreate with light. She's not interested in telling anyone what to think. Her art doesn't prescribe. Text, voice, and cultural references are woven throughout her illustrated storytelling, but never as an instruction manual. Instead, the viewer is confronted with their own assumptions, sitting with discomfort or satisfaction, and occasionally both.

DL: A smile can be welcoming, but it can also be a mask—hiding discomfort, manipulation, or even threat. When you observe a smile, what do you look for beneath the surface?

KK: Levels of genuinity. I like to think I have a good gauge of character, though I have been duped. I analyze people's body language, eyes, and words—how they say things, what they say, and what they want me to notice. Smiles from politicians, celebrities, and public figures are also telling. The face can reveal a lot.

DL: You are very witty. How important do you think it is to have a sense of satire within certain messages?

KK: Ha, thanks! Satire, irony, and humor are essential. I enjoy messages within messages, where viewers can peel back layers and engage with them. I like to watch people work and see their brains connecting dots. Sometimes the satire comes from the viewer, sometimes it's the title, and sometimes it's the piece itself. Irony is all around us, like cosmic signs. When I am looking around, reading, writing, listening, and paying attention to what is happening inside of me, sometimes I think of a message or I usurp one.

One example is “America’s Shopping List,” which outlines harmful chemicals and hidden toxins in our food and everyday products. It exposes the deceptive nature of consumerism and predatory corporate influence over our choices. We are forced to buy products not for what they contain, but for what they lack. The repetition of “free” becomes unsettling irony—rather than liberation, we are anything but free, held at the mercy of corporations that control the everyday things we need to survive and be human.

DL: Do you feel like even when you spell it out, it gets lost at times?

KK: Potentially. I can't control people's interpretations, nor would I want to. We are so indoctrinated, polarized, and bombarded with information day to day that people exist on their own ideological islands. It’s important to note this is not normal. Humans are not meant to consume constant chatter. We have to make an active effort to step back, put the phone down, understand how we feel, and question things—especially our own biases.

DL: When you’re not making art, what’s something completely unrelated that you love to do?

KK: Horseback ride—I am a horse girl forever. I also love games and puzzles. I like mental stimulation, to figure things out. I love competition and play. I’ve always been very playful. I love (and need) physical activity—boxing, swimming, tennis, running (even though I like running the least). I enjoy reading fiction and nonfiction across a variety of concepts. Lately I’ve been digging into classics I never read: Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Stranger, Heart of Darkness, and currently A Clockwork Orange. I also love a really good movie and stand-up comedy. I admire comedians.

DL: Are you more aware of the importance of your message in a world where our movements and identities are constantly being monitored?

KK: Yes and no. I had a studio visit with a dear friend and curator last week, and she said I hold onto language like a lifeboat. I do feel that way. I have so much respect for words and the actions that follow them. I also feel like words need saving. They are constantly disappearing, being manipulated, weaponized, redacted. I want to keep peeling back and exposing their layers, etymologies, and (mis)uses.

DL: Many of your performances involve immersive components where the audience encounters uncomfortable truths. How do you offset discomfort with engagement? Can you tell us a really memorable interaction?

KK: I love the push and pull performance allows. I like viewers to ask themselves, “Is this a performance? Is this not?” because that is how I see reality. On some level, we are all uncomfortable, we are all performing. My performances aim to make people aware of their discomfort—and perhaps that awareness is the catalyst for engagement.

I’ve had many memorable interactions. Brown Hair, Brown Eyes was a performance I did with my partner in 2019 at Pen + Brush in New York. He abducted me in various forms—sometimes brutal, sometimes nothing happened at all. Although it was a formal performance with seated viewers, I constantly broke the fourth wall. In one scene, I was “locked” in a room and frantically asked the audience for a bobby pin after ripping through a body bag. I yelled at them as if it were their fault. I like the tension of what people “should” or “shouldn’t” do. I am asking for help, but you won’t give it because you want to respect the performance—but the performance is also real, is it not?

Another was DO NOT STEP OVER ME, where I lay on the fourth floor of my former five-floor walk-up in NYC. Most people stepped over me. One man lifted my coat off of me immediately—I later learned he was a firefighter and genuinely wanted to make sure I was okay. Others kicked or poked me. I documented each interaction and had someone take a Polaroid as evidence.

I’ve also done guerilla performances—posting MOMA HAS NOT YET RESPONDED FOR COMMENT in MoMA bathroom stalls, placing a SHE WAS LAST SEEN mattress outside Jeffrey Epstein’s former mansion, and appearing at Art Basel and UNTITLED with a QR code on my skin debuting WILL YOU BUY ME.

I love to play with our consensus reality—and with people—constantly.

DL: What’s the weirdest or most unexpected place you’ve ever found inspiration?

KK: Weirdest? Waiting rooms and Walgreens. They’re always so drab, fluorescent, and selling poison. But honestly, I find inspiration almost everywhere. Unique individuals I meet move me deeply. I have muses, without a doubt. Listening to how people speak inspires me. Years behind a bar gave me a lot to chew on and led me to performance art.

Directors and actors inspire me, even though I loathe Hollywood. I love Stanley Kubrick and Johnny Depp. Writers and comedians too—I have a special love for George Carlin. Musicians and composers as well, especially Max Richter, Yann Tiersen, and Ludovico Einaudi.