Drawing in preparation for an absurdist sculpture using my childhood sewing machine and found objects for my 2025 exhibition Repair Shop, which explore ideas of labor, “usefulness,” and value.

Kathleen McDermott is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in installation, prop-making and sculpture, based in Brooklyn, NY. She combines her knowledge of fabrication with open source hardware to build a language of absurdity that merges new media, design, performance, and video. She is interested in unproductive technologies that extend and highlight embodied knowledge, and that resist control. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, The Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Maine, the Wende Museum in LA, and Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria; and has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Fast Company, and Dezeen.