Katherine Megumi Shozawa is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from the unceded ancestral lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations, an area known as Vancouver, British Columbia. Her socially engaged art practice begins with intimate examinations of stories and qualities of memory in marginalized communities in the U.S. and Canada, including her own.  Spanning more than twenty years, her work is diverse in scope while linked by a common focus on the visual and cultural vitality of inclusive public space.

Shozawa attended the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program and earned her MFA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley and BA in American Studies from Yale University.  Her work currently travels to museums and communities across Canada and the U.S. and is documented in three recent books, including Listening to the City (2018) from the MIT Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) where she was a research affiliate.  Past fellowships and grants include the Lannan Foundation at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MuraLab at the City of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant, and others.  During her years in Philadelphia, she advised the Chinatown North Social Practice Lab, supported by ArtPlace America, alongside artist and co-founder Rick Lowe of Project Row Houses.  For nearly ten years, Shozawa served as inaugural Director of Community Engagement at the College of Art and Design, Lesley University, founding the first socially engaged art and design incubator to connect faculty and students to communities in Cambridge and Greater Boston. She established the first community access scholarship for talented local high school students to co-enroll in undergraduate courses. Shozawa is a lecturer at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.