Susan Te Kahurangi King (born 1951) is an

autistic The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...

artist from New Zealand who found international fame in 2009. She was born in

Te Aroha Te Aroha ( mi, Te Aroha-a-uta) is a rural town in the Waikato region of New Zealand with a population of 3,906 people in the 2013 census, an increase of 138 people since 2006. It is northeast of Hamilton and south of Thames. It sits at the f ...

in 1951. King is a self-taught artist whose ability to speak declined by the age of four, and by the age of eight stopped speaking altogether. She has methodically created an entire analogous world through drawings using pen, graphite, colored pencil, crayon and ink. In the middle-to-late 1970s, King produced intricate, hypnotic dreamscapes that powerfully blend animals, humans and inanimate objects into networked tapestries. During the 1980s, King began to reduce the representational content of her drawings, instead focusing on diagrammatic compositions with a cell- or map-like structure. King drew prolifically through to the early 1990s and then for an unknown reason suddenly she stopped. King resumed drawing in 2008 when documentary film maker Dan Salmon began filming her and her art.

Art collector A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...

and

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

Peter Fay discovered her work and curated a solo show for her in Sydney in 2009. In 2013 King showed at the prestigious Paris Outsider Art Fair. In 2015 she had her first solo US show ''Drawings from Many Worlds'' at the Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York. In July 2016, King's debut museum exhibition opened at the

Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

. Her work was exhibited at the Marlborough Contemporary gallery in London in 2018 and at the Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in 2019. King has public collections held by

The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...

, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Chartwell Collection
and th
James Wallace Arts Trust
A monograph of King's work was published in 2016 by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. King also contributed to the 2016 anthology of New Zealand women's comics, '' Three Words''. In 2016 the

American Folk Art Museum The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at 2, Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of ...

founded the Susan Te Kahurangi King Fellowship program.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:King, Susan Te Kahurangi New Zealand Māori artists 1951 births Living people People from Te Aroha Outsider artists Women outsider artists 20th-century New Zealand women artists 21st-century New Zealand women artists Artists with autism New Zealand people with disabilities Ngāti Hauā people