Karen Harkema is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice examines the shifting relationship between human experience and technological systems. Drawing on a background in computer science and a professional career in the technology sector, she brings a materially informed and critically engaged perspective to questions of machine intelligence, embodiment, labour, and contemporary forms of connection.

Working across painting, sculpture, ceramics, video, and installation, Harkema develops works that translate abstract digital processes into tactile, physical encounters. Her practice is rooted in experimentation with materials and processes, using the language of objects, surfaces, and moving image to explore how technology shapes perception, identity, and everyday life.

Recurring throughout her work is an interest in dialogue: between analogue and digital, body and machine, control and uncertainty, utility and emotion. By bringing technological forms into conversation with handmade processes, she creates spaces for reflection on the systems we build and the values they carry.

Harkema completed her three-year Visual Arts degree with distinction through the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 2025. Her final-year exhibition, Religare: Dia Logos with the Machine, marked a significant stage in her evolving practice, bringing together multiple media in an immersive investigation of human–machine entanglement.

She is currently enrolled for the UNISA Bachelor of Arts Honours in Visual Multimedia Arts, continuing her commitment to critical inquiry, research-led practice, and artistic development.

Through a practice that is both conceptually rigorous and materially responsive, Karen Harkema invites viewers to consider the future being shaped through our increasingly intimate relationship with technology.

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