Karen Oremus has worked as an artist, curator and educator internationally in Australia, Canada, the United States, Italy, England, Germany, China, Estonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Middle East. She received her BFA in Printmaking, with a Minor in Roman Archaeology at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. She studied Painting and Printmaking at the Academia di Belli Arte di Roma, (Academy of Fine Arts in Rome), Italy, and completed her archaeological field school at the University of Warwick in Coventry England. Karen graduated with an MFA in Printmaking from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University, in Philadelphia, USA. Oremus worked for fifteen years as an Associate Professor in the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates, where she was responsible for the establishment and development of the first printmaking studio and printmaking discipline in the nation’s capital on the Abu Dhabi campus and contributed to the establishment of the College in her previous tenure as Assistant Dean. Karen joined Winthrop University in August 2018 as Chair of the Department of Fine Arts in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

The conceptual exploration of matter, energy, mind and spirit, and their interplay immersed in the experience of the ephemeral have been key foci within Oremus’ creative practice. Exploring the connections between the spiritual and the scientific, with an aim to visualize and represent impermanence and the invisible, have perpetually been contemplated. Investigating the body as a vessel and how a disease (dementia in particular) can slowly decay memory pathways making them latent, dormant, and unintelligible, embodies such endeavors. Ultimately the loss of the tangible presents the search for the infinite nature of energy and its location(s). Oremus’ creative research focuses on mapping out such places through imagined cartographies and descriptions of other conceptual realms that exist in presently inaccessible obfuscated locations.

Karen Oremus most recently exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at La Latteria Moderna in Venice Italy, the Museum of Seljackih Buna in Zagreb Croatia, and the Multimedia Center in Rovijn Croatia. She also recently participated in juried and invitational exhibitions at both the Xi’an Art Museum and the China Printmaking Museum in China; the Kyoto Art Museum in Japan; Museo Do Duoro in Portugal; the International Biennale of Works on Paper at Palazzo Fogazzaro in Vicenza Italy; The Center for Applied Arts and Innovation in Wroclaw Poland; The Center for Book Arts in New York, NY; and the Brooklyn Gallery in Brooklyn New York. Recent awards include the 2017 Guanlan Print Prize at the Guanlan Printmaking Biennial in Shenzhen China and the Croatian Woman of the Year Award in Arts and Culture, in Zagreb Croatia.