Rate My Professor Karina Skvirsky

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky is Professor of Art and Department Head at Lafayette College, positions she has held since joining the faculty in the fall of 2006. She earned a B.A. in Spanish Literature from Oberlin College in 1990 and an M.F.A. in Photography from Indiana University in 1996. Raised between the U.S. and Ecuador as a woman of Ecuadorian and Jewish-American ancestry, Skvirsky's artistic practice is multidisciplinary, spanning photography, video, and performance. Her research specializations include Latin American history and contemporary art practice. She employs personal narratives as entry points to broader inquiries into place, identity, and nationhood, as well as histories of the African diaspora, complexities of indigeneity, and legacies of colonialism. Her work, influenced by abstraction, politics, humor, feminism, and art history, utilizes static and moving images, often with performance elements, to interrogate the subjectivity of history and truth. Projects are research-driven, originating from specific questions.

In her teaching, Skvirsky instructs students at all levels in art-making, including courses such as Photography I, Digital Photography I-III, Video Art I, Imaging America, and Capstone in Art. She emphasizes process over product, encouraging questioning and embracing ambiguity. Among her major awards and fellowships are the Fulbright Research/Scholar Award to Ecuador for “The Perilous Journey of Maria Palacios” (2015), Creative Capital Award (2019), New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship (2019), Anonymous Was A Woman award (2019), New Jersey State Council on the Arts Photography Fellowship (2015), and the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award from Lafayette College (2021). She has participated in numerous international exhibitions, with solo shows including “The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios” at Smack Mellon Gallery (2017), “Geometría Sagrada / Sacred Geometry” at Ponce + Robles Gallery in Madrid (2019) and Museo Amparo in Puebla (2019), and “Las piedras están vivas” at Ponce + Robles Gallery (2022). Group exhibitions feature the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010) and Impermanence: XIII Cuenca Biennial (2016). Skvirsky serves on the board of trustees of the Allentown Art Museum and the board of directors of The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center Inc., and volunteers for the Democratic National Party.