Karolina Karlic is a visual artist working with photography and documentary practices to examine the intersections of labor, industry, and the environmental and social impacts of globalization. Her projects investigate how post-industrial systems shape both human lives and ecologies within global production networks. Her research Rubberlands traces the global footprint of the natural rubber industry, examining rubber’s role in the second industrial revolution and its deep connections to photography—as both material and driver of contemporary mobile economies of production and consumption.

Karlic has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the founding director of Unseen California, an artist-led research initiative engaging the UC Natural Reserve System. She serves as Director of Graduate Studies in the Environmental Art + Social Practice MFA Program at UC Santa Cruz; Faculty Director of Art + Science Initiatives at the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History and co-leads the UC Climate Action Arts Network.