Kristin McWharter is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work interrogates the relationship between competition and intimacy. Integrating innovative and novel technologies within immersive sculptural installations and viewer- inclusive performances. McWharter's work imagines new and alternative forms of social behaviors and relationships. Inspired by 20th century social/psychology research concerning “the self”, collective decision making, and technology as a contemporary spiritual authority, her work blurs the boundaries of social intimacy and consumer culture in an effort to evoke viewers’ individual relationships to affection, antagonism, sincerity and discomfort within the larger social context.

With CultureHub, McWharter is exploring the dynamics of eye contact as social signal of both aggression and empathy. With recent research demonstrating that lack of eye contact leads to toxic disinhibition in online social exchanges, a new body of work will question how the presence of eye contact within virtual reality and sculptural form proposes new behaviors.

Projects