Miatta Kawinzi: Notes on Possibility

Bio:

Miatta Kawinzi is a Kenyan-Liberian-American multidisciplinary artist raised in the U.S. South and based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work explores hybridity within the African Diaspora and the re-imagining of the self, identity, and culture through abstraction and poetics. Kawinzi's recent work employs sculptural sound and video installation, still and moving images, the voice and body, language, and site-responsive sculpture to explore questions around alternative temporalities and the liberatory and regenerative potential of softness. Her work has been presented at CUE Art Foundation, the Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PopRally, BRIC, Maysles Cinema, and the Museum of the Moving Image, among other spaces. She has completed artist residencies internationally in spaces including the LMCC Paris Residency at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, the African Interactive Art Residency coordinated by POV Spark in partnership with the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture, NYC, DC, and Venice, Italy, the Bag Factory, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Bemis Center, Omaha, NE. Kawinzi has received awards including the 2021–⁠22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, the 2021 New York Artadia Award, and the 2018 Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant administered by Queer|Art. She has previously taught at Hampshire College and the University of Richmond. She received a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Art & Cultural Theory from Hampshire College and an M.F.A. in Studio Art from Hunter College.

Miatta Kawinzi is the fall 2021 Teiger Mentor in the Arts.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE HELD IN-PERSON AND WILL NOT INCLUDE A ZOOM OPTION FOR VIEWING.