Katrina Majkut "Team Spinx (Penelope)"

Katrina Majkut "Team Spinx (Penelope)" 2024

Mixed Media on Vintage Baseball Card
Dimensions: 4in x 3in; framed 5in x 7in
Unique
Signed on Verso

Katrina Majkut (My’kut), a Ukrainian American visual artist, curator, and writer, is dedicated to understanding how social traditions impact social and civil rights. Majkut exhibits nationally in both commercial and college galleries, where she lectures on gender, art activism, and textile arts. 

In 2024, she was in a group show titled Get in the Game at SF MoMA and had a solo show at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago. Selected group and solo exhibitions include over 40 colleges, Spring Break Art Show (NYC), Tyger Tyger (NC), Bronx Museum Biennial, Every Women Biennial, Dorsky Museum, Museum of Craft and Design (CA), Untitled Space Gallery (NY), and AIR Gallery. Fellowships include the Wassaic Projects, Forge NYC, and the Bronx Museum AIM program (NY). Residencies include Elizabeth Murray/Collarworks, MASS MoCA, Jentel, and Project for Empty Space (NJ). Majkut received her MFA from SMFA at Tufts University. In 2023, Majkut was part of national news when her artwork, Medical Abortion Pills was censored by Lewis-Clark State College administrators in the show she curated called Unconditional Care. Working with the ACLU and National Coalition Against Censorship, Majkut and the artists spoke out against censorship, first amendment violations, and anti-abortion laws.

“The art series Fair Play by feminist and embroidery artist, Katrina Majkut reimagines the classical art practice of miniature portraits in an unlikely form: the baseball card. In Fair Play, Majkut is reinventing who the baseball card worships, values, represents, and celebrates with a little paint and a whole lot of glitter. The baseball card, a tiny piece of cultural Americana, held the fascination of many American youths including Majkut herself. Kids and kids-at-heart traded and covered various players to add to personal treasure troves of sports role models and to represent athletic hopes. These mini advertisements taught fans who was important. And considering that those worshipped were all cis, able-bodied, heteronormative men, baseball cards also taught us who was not important. Growing up in Boston’s hardcore Red Sox fandom (#SorryNotSorry New York fans), the Curse of the Bambino was not the only shadow over Majkut’s baseball experience. It never dawned on the young Majkut that she was placing such importance on people who did not represent her and would never welcome her into their ranks.  Fair Play reimagines the world of baseball as a place of healthy acceptance, inclusivity, and diversity; a place to see herself – and anyone who has felt excluded from or a complicated role in men’s professional baseball – as a truly welcomed teammate. Fair Play subverts the toxic masculinity of vintage baseball cards by obscuring the identity of the player, teams, and brands with mediums that have been stereotyped as domestic, feminine, queer, effeminate, and low-end. The new players’ intersectional ambiguity aims to bring balance to baseball’s male-dominated space, especially as women and queer players have been omitted from its history and present-day teams. The joyful cards celebrate all players with the whimsy of beads, sequins, paint, embroidery thread, glitter, and more. Transformed into equitable platforms, the beautiful and inclusive sports cards are now worthy of coveting because they exercise fair play.” - Katrina Majkut

Learn more about her artwork and exhibitions on our website.