About Natalya Kochak

Natalya Kochak is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice engages language, history, and material process as interrelated systems. Born in New York, she lived across multiple regions of the United States before settling in Miami in 2014, where she has maintained an active studio and teaching practice for over a decade. Kochak received her BFA (2005) and MFA (2018) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her practice centers on the examination of printed texts and archival sources, which she deconstructs and reconfigures into physically and conceptually layered surfaces to examine how cultural narratives are transmitted, stabilized, and revised over time.

Across studio practice, installation, and pedagogy, she employs confrontation as a generative strategy—inviting reflection, responsibility, and critical re-reading—while material decisions, rather than illustrative storytelling, guide the structure and pacing of her work. Since establishing her practice in Miami, Kochak has sustained a strong commitment to education and public-facing engagement within Miami-Dade County. From 2018–2019, she was an artist-in-residence with ProjectArt, working with displaced teenagers and park district students at the Liberty City Library. From 2019–2023, she taught in the Visual Arts Department at Miami International University, and she currently serves as an adjunct professor of art history at Barry University, teaching courses spanning prehistory through contemporary global art.

Kochak’s broader pedagogical work includes workshops and mural projects with students in Miami, across the United States, and internationally, including in Uganda and China. Through both teaching and public-facing projects, her practice extends inquiry outward—guiding others to critically examine social inequities and noncongruent historical narratives, including what has been marginalized, silenced, or normalized within dominant cultural structures. Her studio practice continues to develop in dialogue with Miami’s layered social, cultural, and diasporic contexts. She lives and works in Miami.