Miatta Kawinzi

Miatta Kawinzi is a Kenyan-Liberian-American multi-disciplinary artist raised in the U.S. South and based in NYC. 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, New York City; the Studio Museum in Harlem; MoMA PopRally; BRIC, Brooklyn; Maysles Cinema, New York City; and the Museum of the Moving Image, Queens; among other spaces, and she has completed artist residencies internationally.

Kawinzi has previously taught at Hampshire College and the University of Richmond. She received an M.F.A. in Studio Art from Hunter College and a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Art & Cultural Theory from Hampshire College.

Related News

• Department of Art at 100: New Leadership, Faculty, and Practice
• Miatta Kawinzi: Notes on Possibility
• Miatta Kawinzi Illuminates Spaces of Connection and Possibility Across Place, Space, and Time

Classes (Selected)

• ART 6000 Graduate Seminar: Contemporary Theory and Art

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2021–22)
• New York Artadia Award (2021)
• Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant administered by Queer|Art (2018)
• Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Paris Residency at Cité internationale des arts (2018)
• Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Residency (2016)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• Soft is Strong, solo exhibition at CUE Art Foundation, New York City (2021)
• Breathwork, solo performance at BRIC, Brooklyn, NY (2018)
• Their Own Harlems, group exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City (2017)