What happens when the image we see is not the whole story?

Katelyn Kopenhaver is a Miami-based interdisciplinary artist and studio resident at Bakehouse Art Complex. Her work explores the space between perception and truth. Through visual art, text and social commentary, her practice examines media, culture and the overlooked realities of everyday life — particularly the moments when personal experience collides with the narratives we are collectively taught to believe.

Kopenhaver’s creative process is rooted in observation and interrogation. Rather than accepting an image, story or cultural assumption at face value, she looks closer: at what has been emphasized, what has been distorted and, perhaps most importantly, what has been left out.

That tension takes on particular resonance in Miami, a city where beauty, spectacle, reinvention and self-presentation are woven into the cultural landscape. In her feature for Don't Tell Me How to Art (DTMHTA), Kopenhaver offers a counterpoint to the surface, exploring questions of truth, accountability, social harm and the personal risks of challenging established narratives.

Among Miami’s contemporary artists, Kopenhaver brings a critical voice to the conversation, reminding us that art doesn't always provide an escape. Sometimes its purpose is to make us notice what we would rather overlook.

Because in a world saturated with images, seeing is not always the same as knowing.