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Kenyatta A.C.Hinkle, Left: The Givers,
2013, photo printed on archival matte paper, glitter, acrylic paint, and glass
beads medium, 30 x 20 inches; Right: The Keeper, 2013, acrylic paint,
photograph printed on cotton paper, 11 x 7 inches. Images via jenkinsjohnsongallery.com.
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Say It Isn’t So…
February 20 – April 5, 2014
Opening reception: Thursday, February 20, 2014, 6:00 – 8:00PM
521 West 26th
Street
New York, NY
From Jenkins Johnson Gallery
press release:
Jenkins Johnson
Gallery, New York is pleased to present Say It Isn’t So… the
New York debut of critically acclaimed contemporary artist Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle. Hinkle’s work was shown in The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Fore exhibition,
and she was the youngest participant in the Made in LA 2012 biennial
at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Her artwork and performances of
experimental texts have been reviewed by the The New York Times, Los
Angeles Times, Artforum, The Huffington Post,
and LA Weekly, and she was a finalist for the 2013 Los Angeles
Artadia Award.
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary, Los Angeles-based visual artist,
writer, and performer who is interested having a conversation about the
complexities of history and power. Say It Isn’t So… is woven
from historical and contemporary narratives that raise questions concerning our
collective encounters with the black female body and its relationship to the
exotic. The exhibition features a variety of media, including drawings,
paintings, text-based work, audio, and video. These pieces explore personal
narratives from the artist intermingled with known and unknown historical
figures in relationship to notions and constructions of the black female body
as a prototype for both exotic beauty and repulsion.
On view will be work that reconstructs narratives of late 19th century and
early 20th century West African ethnographic photography taken mainly by
French colonialists. The photographs, which were heavily distributed throughout
Europe as postcards and carte-de-visites, enforced the construction of the
African (and black) female body as exotic and primitive. Through the
embellishment of these photos, Hinkle uses the metaphor of disease to represent
colonialism and the poetic interpretation of a virus entering the body. Hinkle
interrogates the power dynamics between the gaze, the subject, and the viewer.
Her drawings upon these photographs serve as a means to protect, not to
consume, the women’s flesh.
Also on view will be Hinkle's body of work inspired by Maryse Condé's book
"I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem" (1992). Conde's historical fiction
delves into the story of a woman of color who was a pivotal figure during the
Salem Witch Trials. Hinkle is fascinated by how Conde’s reflections on
Otherness, racism, gender, sexuality, Diaspora, cultural and religious
hegemony, and love intermingle with her own experiences inhabiting a black and
pregnant body for the first time. Accompanying this installation will be a
collaborative score between Hinkle and performer/composer Kevin Robinson.
Say It Isn’t So… includes brand new video work by
Hinkle that will tackle concepts of endurance, vulnerability, racism, and the
female body. Featuring imagery like the artists agape mouth for extended
periods of time, recreating specific experiences of racism, and addressing the
inhabitation and endurance of pregnancy, Hinkle takes her overarching themes
and explorations of the black female body and the exotic into the realm of the
performative.
