Kate DeCiccio is an Oakland based artist, educator & creative strategist. Her work centers portraiture for counter narrative, community storytelling & cultural strategy on behalf of abolition and collective liberation. DeCiccio is from Central Massachusetts where she grew up on occupied Nipmuc territory on her family’s 4th generation farm. She is the 3rd generation of her Polish and Italian ancestors and descends from 11 generations of English colonizers. Before working as an artist full time DeCiccio was a mental health and substance abuse counselor and taught art at San Quentin Prison, St Elizabeths Forensic Psychiatric hospital & Leadership High School. The intersections of creativity, mental illness, addiction and ancestral investigation have been driving themes in her art practice since she was a teenager. DeCiccio is committed to repairing the harm of her inherited legacy and working to heal our collective imagination by learning how to stand squarely in truth, accountability, renewed resilience and unknown possibility.
DeCiccio is the Cultural Strategist for Performing Statistics, a project that supports youth organizers to close youth prisons across the country. Her collaborations include work with The People's Paper Coop, The Painted Desert Project, 826 National, Critical Resistance, Survived and Punished, Planting Justice and Dear Frontline. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Library of Congress and The Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
