Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
Kentifrications

Kentifrica is a contested geography/continent for which artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is developing an educational and research platform. Through re-creating Kentifrican objects, sharing narratives and customs from her research archives, she is exploring identity as a construction, inviting critical engagement with the intersections of collective vs. personal histories, Diaspora, migration, immigration, cross-cultural exchange, issues of geography and authority in relation- ship to knowledge production. Through the embodiment of various voices and modes of address, Hinkle examines what happens to bodies in transit and how are they contextualized culturally, depending upon historically sanctioned, dominant signifiers of race and culture. The project exists as a multi-layered living and breathing organism that thrives off of collaborations with various individuals and communities who originate from multiple social, cultural, geographical, and artistic experiences.

Kentifrications: Convergent Truth(s) and Realities is a multi-part publication: a catalogue from Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle's 2018 exhibition at the Weingart Gallery at Occidental College; an introduction to Kentifrican culture with essays by Isaac DeLamatre, Alana Hillman, and Eugene Moon; a special collection of origami/zine styled Kentifrican book covers designed by Adrianna Housman in which readers are encouraged to cut, fold, and put together; and a bonus USB flash drive of Kentifrican music, language, and explorations by Kevin Robinson.

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, and performer. Her practice fluctuates between collaborations and participatory projects with alternative gallery spaces within various communities to projects that are intimate and based upon her private experiences in relationship to historical events and contexts. A term that has become a mantra for her practice is the “Historical Present,” as she examines the residue of history and how it affects our contemporary world perspective. Her artwork and experimental writing has been exhibited and performed at The BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Project Row Houses, The Hammer Museum, The Museum of Art at The University of New Hampshire, The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco and The Made in LA 2012 Biennial. Hinkle’s work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Artforum, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post and The New York Times. She is also the recipient of several awards including: Social Practice in Art (SPart-LA), Jacob K Javits Fellowship for Graduate Study, The Fulbright Fellowship, and The Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artists Award. Her writing has appeared in Not That But This, Obsidian Journal, Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics, and she has a forthcoming first book called SIR, a reflection on naming as a tool for undefining the defined, that will be published with Litmus Press.