Karen Kraven

"I was terribly hungry; it was at least twenty hours since my last meal. When Rheya had finished her ministrations I got up. Two dresses, draped over the back of a chair caught my eye–two absolutely identical white dresses, each decorated with a row of red buttons. I myself had helped Rheya out of one of them, and she had reappeared, yesterday evening, dressed in the second.

“I had to cut the seam open with scissors,” she said. “I think the zip fastener must have got stuck.”

The sight of two identical dresses filled me with horror which exceeded anything I felt hitherto. Rheya was busy tidying up the medicine chest. I turned my back and bit my knuckles. Unable to take my eyes off the two dresses, –or rather the original dress and its double–I backed towards the door. The basin tap was running noisily. I opened the door and, slipping out of the room, cautiously closed it behind me."

-Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961)

Karen Kraven is an artist based in Montreal, Canada. Through sculpture and photography, her work with textiles and clothing explores sports team uniforms, camouflage and costume and is influenced by her father's, and his father's knitting factory, Kraven Knitting, that stopped manufacturing the year she was born. Her work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the Maine College of Art in Portland, ME, Mercer Union, Toronto and Darling Foundry, Montreal. She is represented by Parisian Laundry in Montreal.