Karma
Barnes

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born. 1979. Tāmaki Makaurau | Aotearoa New Zealand  | lives. Bundjalung Country | NSW | Australia

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Karma Barnes is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Tamaki Makaurau, Aotearoa- New Zealand who lives and works on Bundjalung Country, Northern Rivers, Australia. Her art encompasses site-specific installations, painting, and participatory practices. With a focus on social practice and engaging communities, Karma's large-scale projects involve collaboration with numerous individuals. For the past 15 years, she has explored pigments and soils, examining the critical connections between people and the land. Her work has reached a wide audience, with exhibitions across Australasia, Europe, Asia, and the USA, engaging over 15,000+ participants in her site-specific works and collaborative art-making. Works have been exhibited throughout Australasia, Europe, Asia and South America.

 

From 2020 to 2023, Karma collaborated with her mentor of two decades, Robèrt Franken, on the exhibition Relative Terrains. This work examined the transformative impact of geological landscapes, elemental forces, time, and life experiences on individuals and communities. Initially reflecting on the 2019-20 Australian Black Summer bushfires and coinciding with the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibition adapted to include climatic shifts such as the catastrophic flooding events in 2022. It metaphorically linked inner psychological responses and collective social experiences to these climatic events.

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In 2019, Karma was invited to The MACRO Asilo—Rome Museum of Contemporary Art—where she installed a 20-meter-long interactive piece made from pigments gathered from the outskirts of Rome and Tuscany, in collaboration with artist Ekarasa Doblanovic. Karma's work was also featured in the Wild Pigment Project exhibition at Form & Concept (2022) and New Mexico State University Art Museum (2023), showcasing artists working with pigments internationally.

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Notably, the New Mexico State University Art Museum recently acquired two of Karma's significant artworks, Compounded Caldera (2022) and Raw Earth Pigment Palettes (2022), which explore the social impacts of climate change. This acquisition marks the artist's first by a major art institution, signifying institutional recognition of her work.

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In November 2024, Karma's durational installation Co-Lapses will be exhibited at the Arsenale Nord, Venice, Italy, as part of the Arte Laguna Prize.

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Karma is an ambassador for the Terzo Paradiso Rebirth-day Project - an international arts collaboration with the founder of the Arte Povera movement Michelangelo Pistoletto. Under the project Karma's work has been presented in Azerbaijan, Cuba and Italy and most notably at the Louvre Museum, France as part of the Year 1: Earthly Paradise exhibition. In 2019 Karma attended the Terzo Paradiso Panel for the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the MACRO Asilo in Rome. Through her soil and pigment research Karma has collaborated with Vandana Shiva and the Bhoomi Living Soil Project at the Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology, New Delhi, India.

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Between 2009 and 2019, Karma co-directed the Imagine the Land Project alongside Croatian/New Zealand artist Ekarasa Doblanovic. The project aimed to foster connections among people, art, and nature by employing participatory arts practices and creating temporary land-based installations. The work and research of the Imagine the Land Project specifically centred on site-specific art installations produced from soil pigments and minerals sourced from local terrains and pre-disturbed sites.

The project's methodology emphasised community engagement, connection to place, and collective ontologies of the land. It addressed critical relationships within the local and global environment while endeavouring to cultivate compassionate connections between participants and their surroundings. The project provided participants with an opportunity for a direct tactile, sensory, and conceptual response to nature, impermanence, and interconnectedness, with the soil serving as the medium, catalyst, and messenger. In collaboration with art partners and communities, the project's extensive exhibitions and presentations have included Te Uru - West Auckland Regional Gallery (New Zealand 2014, 2017), The Bhoomi Festival (New Delhi, 2015), Wellington Museum of Land and Sea (2011) and The Villa de Leyva Museum (Colombia, 2010).

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Karma is a qualified art therapist specialising in acute mental health, trauma recovery, and brain injury. Her professional practice has played a pivotal role in community response and recovery during a series of significant natural disasters over a four-year period, including the largest food event in modern Australian history affecting the

Northern Rivers region.

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Demonstrating a deep commitment to nurturing the arts in future generations, Karma has dedicated the past 12 years to overseeing youth arts mentoring projects throughout the Northern Rivers. Moreover, she has garnered extensive experience working in post-occupied and developing countries, including Timor Leste, India, and Indigenous communities across Australia.

Karma's practice focuses into the intricate ways individuals are shaped by their relationships, particularly at the intersections of nature and culture. Her exploration is driven by a profound interest in the perpetual cycles of life and death, creation and destruction. Furthermore, Karma endeavours to comprehend how our internal and external experiences, coupled with various elements and the transient nature of existence, contribute to personal understanding and transformation.

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