Katelyn Halpern is a multidisciplinary artist from Austin, Texas living in Jersey City.
Trained as a dancer and writer and self-taught in other media, she works in installations, performance, multimedia visual art, and the written word on subjects of peace/not peace, intimate relationship, space dust, possibility-freedom-futures, and the experience of moving through the world in a feminine body. Her works, often formulated as worlds, versions, and networks, function as propositions about how things might, or ought, to be.
Hailed as a “compelling conceptual artist,” “mischief maker,” and “born searcher,” (Jersey City Times), she is a 2024 Rabbinic Arts Fellow, a 2024 Interdisciplinary Arts Finalist and 2023 Choreography Finalist with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a New Jersey Performing Arts Center Jersey New Moves Fellow (2019-2022), a Dresher Ensemble Artist in Residence (2020), a Hambidge Center for Creative Arts Fellow (2016), and the inaugural Choreographers in Residency Program (CHiRP) artist at Jersey City’s County Prep High School (2017). Her creative work has received support from the the Exchange Place Alliance, The Iron Factory, chashama, DANCENOW Silo, Avaloch Farm, the Monira Foundation, and the Arts On Site Residency & Retreat. Her work has been performed and exhibited in galleries, parks, sidewalks, call-in lines, theaters, and venues throughout New York and New Jersey, including BAM Fisher, Deep Space Gallery, NJPAC, the Knockdown Center, the WAYE Poetry Series, Gallery Aferro, and White Eagle Hall, and across the country at Omaha’s Under the Radar Festival, Houston's Talento Bilingue, and San Francisco’s Switchboard Presents.
Major works include the evening length and multi-part danceworks JUICE, Loose Heart, We Are Particles, and Being Here Is What We Are Doing; installations disaster [place], Heartstrung (created with Talita Cabral), and the Labyrinth for Reflection & the Generation of Love [No. 9]; and the mail art project From Me To You, a year’s worth of letters mailed to subscribers.
She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Houston with a B.A. in English Literature, a minor in Dance, University Honors, and Membership in the Honors College. She holds a New Jersey teaching certificate for high school English, is a 2012 Teach for America New Jersey corps member, and is the owner and artistic director of SMUSH Gallery, an art space dedicated to creative and community work in Jersey City.
Contact: katelynhalpern [at] gmail [dot] com
PRESS
New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship & Finalist List, 2024
At EONTA Space, Red Rose Gives Us an Exhibition in Action (6/19/24)
The Fifteen Best Art Shows of 2023 (12/10/23, Jersey City Times)
Seven Art Openings and Closings for the Last Weekend of September (9/29/23, Jersey City Times)
SMUSH becomes monthlong ‘disaster [place],’ in a good way (9/27/23, The Jersey Journal)
New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship & Finalist List, 2023
The Eleven Best Jersey City Art Shows of 2022 (12/9/22, Jersey City Times)
Katelyn Halpern Turns Deep Space Into a “Disaster [Place]” (8/5/22, Jersey City Times)
Pro Arts Jersey City presents Curators Choice Exhibition Curated by Katelyn Halpern (5/3/23, New Jersey Stage)
Dance New Jersey Announces 2022 Mini-Grant Awardees (7/19/22, Broadway World)
The “Troublemakers” of EONTA Space Reopen With a Roomful of Good Trouble (6/17/22, Jersey City Times)
Katelyn Halpern brings her multidisciplinary art to Jersey New Moves (6/2/22, Hollywood Soapbox)
These JC choreographers among six showcased for Jersey New Moves at NJPAC, June 10 (6/9/22, NJ.com)
NJPAC Dance Showcase to Feature Two Jersey City Choreographers (5/13/22, Jersey City Times)
Art House will celebrate dance as an art form at annual Your Move festival (11/6/19, NJ.com)
10th Annual Your Move Modern Dance Festival To Take Place November 13-17 (10/10/19, NewJerseyStage.com)
Music, movement and the unexpected: mignolo dance’s ‘Translations’ (7/30/19, DanceInforma.com)
NJPAC Presents 5th Annual Jersey NEW Moves! (6/7/19, NewJerseyStage.com)
NJ Emerging Choreographers Take to the Stage at NJPAC Friday, June 14th (6/5/19, BroadwayWorld.com)