Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle

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Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle.jpg
Hinkle in 2016
Born1987 (age 33–34)
Louisville, Kentucky
Websitewww.kachstudio.com

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle (born 1987) is an American artist and Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkeley Department of Art Practice, who focuses on questions of race, sexuality, and history through a variety of visual and textual mediums.[1] She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.[2] Notable works include the Kentifrica project,[3] the Tituba series, The Evanesced, and the Uninvited series.[4][5][6][7] She is a member of CTRL+SHFT Collective in Oakland, California.[8][9][10]

Early life[]

Hinkle was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1987. She is of Kentifrica descent, and has created artworks around this part of her identity.[11] Hinkle was inspired by her mother, herself an artist, who, due to the fact that they lived in the segregated South, was unable to pursue her creative identity. Hinkle's mother enforced the idea of "powerful self-possession" into her, which is why Hinkle does not shy away from tough issues in the world.[12]

Education[]

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle studied painting (BFA) at Maryland Institute College of Art and writing (MFA) at California Institute of the Arts.[13] She studied at the AICAD New York Studio Program, Brooklyn, NY from 2008 to 2009. She was a US Fulbright Fellow in Lagos Nigeria from 2015–2016.[14]

Career[]

Hinkle was the youngest artist in the Made in LA Biennial. Her work, both performed and presented, has been featured in the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California, Project Row Houston in Houston, Texas, The California African American Museum,[15] and The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York.[11]

In 2014, Kenyatta and six other black women created and led an event called Call & Response where each artist bought an object and explained what the object meant to them. Kenyatta also led a panel with the question "Kentifrica is or Kentifrica ain't?" Students, faculty at the Antioch University also presented the research they found on Kentifrica.[16] She was included in the 2019 traveling exhibition Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art.[17]

Style and themes[]

By recreating artifacts, sharing narratives, and customs from research archives, I am able to reconstruct a Kentifrican identity.

— Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle

"[Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle's] work investigates race, sexuality and history using historical objects in visual and performance art constructs."[18] A central mantra to her work is the concept of a 'Historical Present', which is defined as "the residue of history and how it affects our contemporary world perspective".[19]

It is essential to understand Kentifrican culture in order to understand Hinkle as an artist. Kentifrica is "a physical and theoretical location conceived by Hinkle. Holding [her] investments in geography, Diaspora, personal vs. collective histories, and the problematics of museum space, Kentifrican artifacts in the gallery space often assume an active role in each shows' narrative".[20] This culture places great value and emphasis on the community, which can be seen in the ways Hinkle assembles objects together to interrogate the colonial and white gaze. Themes of fluid sexuality and collective responsibility that are important to Kentifrican culture, are also present in the tactics Hinkle employs in her works. They form close social circles and gender based roles are not prevalent. Through the community they educate and provide social well-being. The practices and independence of this culture have prevailed even as other cultures have been dominated by European powers.[21] The presence of this concept in Hinkle's work has a goal: "the Kentifrican figure has a distinct role to heal and empower people who are soft-targets for manipulation and abuse".[22]

She often uses photographs with her artworks and explores what could result from that. For instance, some of her artworks can be seen as nude, but the subject or object is covered in some forms. Her work The Contagion (2012) showed, a young African girl not wearing any clothes but there were thick red scribbly lines from her chest up to her head. While her feet seem to be tied down with some thick black scribbly lines. This work communicated the emotional and uninvited of those emotions and feeling. [23]

Work[]

The Evanesced[]

In Hinkle's work The Evanesced, which means to gradually fade away, she creates amorphous representations of bodies, some feature dashes of color to accent certain parts of them.[12] Hinkle offers a social commentary on missing Black women in American and the African Diaspora. She tries to give them voices through her work. She uses minimalist imagery yet is provocative, which further represents the meaning of the series. "The women [...] are surrounded by brushstrokes and lines that seem to slide them onto the canvas, like ghosts that happened to materialize within her paintings".[19] She has an ability to use certain dualities in order to get the most out of her audience. Here she is very confrontational with the issues of sex trafficking, kidnappings, murder and other reasons for these disappearances, but at the same time she is creating sympathy and a call to action for these women.[12] This call to action connects Hinkle's work to social justice movements by tying in The Evanesced to the #SayHerName Movement.

The series also includes a performance entitled The Evanesced: Embodied Disappearance. The performance draws on similar themes, and has a similar impact:"The Evanesced: Embodied Disappearance centers the death and ever-present afterlife of Black women to hold space for pain, remembrance, and healing".[19] The performance piece, featuring Hinkle and her son, includes "a soundtrack of whispers, shuffles, and popular and underground music".[14] The performance piece adds to the visual series - a multi-dimensional examination of erasure and violence within the Black female experience.[14]

The Uninvited[]

In Hinkle's series The Uninvited, she is trying to reclaim the subjects humanity and no longer make them subject to objectivity. Hinkle uses the mass production nature of the postcards in her favor. The postcard format is deliberate, and adds to the meaning of the work, "Hinkle creates disruptive counternarratives by drawing and painting on top of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century postcards of West African women taken mainly by French colonists. These ethnographic photos sought to brand Black women's bodies as dehumanized figments of hypersexualization and conquest, triggering both repulsion and desire".[20] These postcards were once used to further the objectification of the women and strengthen the power of the viewer, as well as a tool of the French colonists. Hinkle is challenging this power dynamic by covering up the women and giving them the power to dictate what is shown.[24] She is exposing the harsh nature and sad reality that women are subjected to by men. At the same time, she is covering the women's bare bodies from the viewers. Hinkle "reconstructs and reimagines the women [from the postcards] through vivid drawings and unique placements on the canvas - in a sense restoring their loss of power".[18] The role and obligation of the viewer is put into question here. It is said that photography is inherently violent, and yet many people indulge in this medium. Hinkle is also calling for people to face the horrific consequences of subjecting someone. There is a discomfort in the women's faces, but they are being seen as objects, and objects don't have voices. Hinkle is trying to get her audience to see the wrong that is being committed.[25] Others have seen the drawn on lines as a representation of disease, this disease is colonialism.[11]

Similarly to The Evanesced, The Uninvited dwells in history, but connects to the present, furthering the notion of a 'Historical Present' which is so central to Hinkle's work. In this series, she has connected the way West African women were treated in the French colonies with how Black women are treated in America today. Explaining the affect she hoped to create with the series, Hinkle stated in an interview: "Working with these women and having them transform me and me transform them, the whole body of work has literally been healing. I do a lot of my work [with] that idea of turning trauma into art".[18] In all of her work, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle uses the 'Historical Present' to turn past trauma into current healing through art.


Recognition[]

Hinkle is the recipient of several fellowships and grants including the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award, the Cultural Center for Innovation's Investing in Artists Grant, Social Practice in Art (SPart-LA), and the Jacob K. Javits Full Fellowship for Graduate Study. She is a recent alumna (2015–2016) of the US Fulbright Program in which she conducted research at the University of Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria.[14]

Her performance and project Kentifrica was featured in the Made in L.A. 2012, making her the youngest artist featured.[26]

References[]

  1. ^ Made In L.A. 2012. Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. 2012. p. 9. ISBN 9783791352312.
  2. ^ Cotter, Holland (2012-11-29). "Racial Redefinition in Progress". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  3. ^ "Haunted Geographies: The Living Work of Kenyatta A.C Hinkle". KCET. 2014-03-11. Retrieved 2018-03-04.
  4. ^ Tedford, Matthew Harrison. "Who Among Us... The Art of Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle | Art Practical". Art Practical. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
  5. ^ Westin, Monica. "Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle on her exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora". artforum.com. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
  6. ^ Gleason, Mat (2017-04-02). "Is Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle The Anti-Schutz?". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  7. ^ Deb, Sopan (2017-04-14). "One Artist's Melancholy Look at Missing African-American Women". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  8. ^ "West Oakland Collective CTRL+SHFT Carves Out Space for Underrepresented Artists". KQED Arts. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  9. ^ "Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle - Hammer Museum". The Hammer Museum. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  10. ^ "Members - ctrlshftcollective.com". ctrlshftcollective.com. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  11. ^ a b c "Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle | HuffPost". www.huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2017-05-06.
  12. ^ a b c Deb, Sopan (2017-04-14). "One Artist's Melancholy Look at Missing African-American Women". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-05-06.
  13. ^ Darling, Nikki (2014-03-12). "Haunted Geographies: The Living Work of Kenyatta A.C Hinkle". KCET. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  14. ^ a b c d "KACH STUDIO". KACH STUDIO. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  15. ^ "Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle's The Evanesced at CAAM". 24700. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  16. ^ Civil, Gabrielle (2015). "Call & response: experiments in joy: an introduction". Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora. 41 (1–2): 3+. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
  17. ^ Sargent, Antwaun (2020). Young, gifted and Black : a new generation of artists : Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art. New York, NY: D.A.P. pp. 110–111. ISBN 9781942884590.
  18. ^ a b c "Artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle Explores Politics of the Female Body - EBONY". www.ebony.com. Retrieved 2017-05-06.
  19. ^ a b c "Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle: The Evanesced: Embodied Disappearance / Misha Choudhry". ASAP/J. 2019-08-29. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
  20. ^ a b "On Retrieval: Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle's Black Feminist Spell". gulfcoastmag.org. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
  21. ^ McGruder, Kevin (Fall 2015). "Kentifrican Cultural Practices: An Experiment in Joy". Obsidian. 41: 82–84.
  22. ^ "San Francisco Arts Commission". www.sfartscommission.org. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
  23. ^ Kanitra, Fletcher (March 1, 2014). "Re-Covered: Wangechi Mutu, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, and the Postcolonial Potentiality of Black Women in Colonial(Ist) Photographs". Social Dynamics. 40: 181–198. doi:10.1080/02533952.2014.886868.
  24. ^ Fletcher, Kanitra (2014-01-02). "Re-covered: Wangechi Mutu, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, and the postcolonial potentiality of black women in colonial(ist) photographs". Social Dynamics. 40 (1): 181–198. doi:10.1080/02533952.2014.886868. ISSN 0253-3952.
  25. ^ Lauren, Haynes; J., Keith, Naima; J., Lax, Thomas; 1980-, Báez, Firelei; 1984-, Barnette, Sadie; 1985-, Beasley, Kevin; 1980-, Campbell, Crystal Z.; 1987-, Cherry, Caitlin; 1973-, Cyrus, Jamal (2012). Fore. ISBN 9780942949162. OCLC 825555536.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  26. ^ "Artist Up: Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle". MICA. Retrieved 7 August 2021.

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