Miatta Kawinzi: An Alphabet of Unfolding
Miatta Kawinzi: An Alphabet of Unfolding is a multi-gallery exhibition that explores hybridity, memory, and sustenance through mixed-media works, sculpture, video, and text. Kawinzi is a Kenyan-Liberian-American artist, writer, and educator whose work explores hybridity within the African Diaspora and the reimagining of self, identity, place, and culture. Her experimental and multidisciplinary practice searches for spaces of possibility through a broad range of media, including analog and digital film/video, photography, writing, performance, multimedia installation, and site-responsive sculpture. With a fusion of new and recent work, An Alphabet of Unfolding is an expansive, multisensory exploration of cultural lineage, ecological interconnection, and the embodied practices through which individuals and communities persist and adapt.
About the Artist
Miatta Kawinzi is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, writer, and educator. Her research-informed practice explores cultural hybridity, memory, freedom dreaming, and ecologies of possibility within inner and outer landscapes. Her practice spans installation, sculpture, still and moving images, sound, painting, and poetics. She is interested in illuminating African/Diasporic points of connection, transformation, and continuity across place, space, and time. Of Liberian and Kenyan heritage, Kawinzi was raised in the US South and is based in NYC.
Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Smack Mellon and CUE Art Foundation in New York, and group presentations at Anthology Film Archives, the Africa Center, PS122 Gallery, and the Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC); Knoxville Museum of Art (TN); Ann Arbor Film Festival (MI); Pan African Film Festival with LACMA, and ICA Los Angeles (CA); Houston Museum of African American Culture (TX); New Orleans Film Festival (LA); and Des Moines Art Center (IA). Kawinzi’s work has been supported by Creative Capital, Jerome Foundation, Harpo Foundation, Artadia, Queer|Art, and New York Foundation for the Arts.
Select residencies/fellowships include G.A.S. Foundation with Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Lagos, Nigeria), Àsìkò Art School (Cairo, Egypt), Smack Mellon (NYC), MacDowell (NH), Residency Unlimited (NYC), Cité internationale des arts (Paris, France), SOMA Summer (Mexico City, Mexico), and the Bag Factory (Johannesburg, South Africa). Her work is included in collections at the Studio Museum in Harlem (Harlem Postcards, NYC), Art Connects New York, and Art in Embassies (Liberia). Her practice has received press in Hyperallergic, Filmmaker Magazine, and MoMA Magazine. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College, and a BA in Interdisciplinary Art & Cultural Theory from Hampshire College. She is currently on faculty at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
She was a resident at Bemis Center in 2016 and the 2019 recipient of Bemis Center’s annual Ree Kaneko Award.
From left: Miatta Kawinzi, Listening (sanctuary) and Listening (growth), 2026. Photographic prints on fabric. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Colin Conces.
Miatta Kawinzi: An Alphabet of Unfolding (Installation View), 2026. Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, June 5 to September 13, 2026. Photo: Colin Conces.
Miatta Kawinzi: An Alphabet of Unfolding (Installation View), 2026. Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, June 5 to September 13, 2026. Photo: Colin Conces.
Miatta Kawinzi, Lullabies for the Distance/d I: Grain Coast (Installation View), 2026. HD color video, 16mm color film transferred to video, two-channel audio: thumb piano, original song, analog & digital synthesizer. 20 minutes, 38 seconds. Supported in part by Creative Capital. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Colin Conces.
Miatta Kawinzi: An Alphabet of Unfolding is generously supported, in part, by:
GET MORE ART IN YOUR INBOX
Contemporary Arts
724 S. 12th Street
Omaha, NE 68102
402.341.7130
info@bemiscenter.org