Iceland
Birth–6
Katrin Yue Shi was born in Iceland and spent the first 6 years of her childhood there.
Biographie
Anhui, China
6–13
At 6, she returned to China and grew up in Anhui until the age of 13.
Iceland
From 14
She returned to Iceland at 14 and attended high school there.
France
Age 21
At 21, she completed her undergraduate studies in France, where her artistic practice developed through installation, sculpture, photography and text.
Münster / France
Age 27 onward
At 27, she studied on exchange at Kunstakademie Münster in Germany, before continuing her studies and artistic research in France.
Her artistic practice is drawn to what escapes the obvious: traces, residues and thresholds of perception. Marcel Duchamp’s concept of infra-mince allows her to think through infinitesimal gaps between presence and absence, and between what remains and what fades away.
Ash, salt, eggshell membrane and mist are chosen not for solidity but for temporal fragility. They evoke transformation and disappearance, leaving an almost imperceptible imprint. Matter becomes the body of time: preserving the vibration of what once was while carrying the possibility of what may still emerge.
Impermanence is both subject and material, explored through trace, loss, disintegration and persistence. Memory appears less as narrative than as vibration: a silent persistence within matter. Her practice also draws on Édouard Glissant’s “poetics of trembling”, Donna Haraway’s compost and ideas of hauntology associated with Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher.