Miatta Kawinzi in Conversation with Rachel Adams

Rachel Adams, Chief Curator + Director of Programs, speaks with exhibiting artist Miatta Kawinzi about her practice and the themes in Miatta Kawinzi: An Alphabet of Unfolding, on view at Bemis Center June 5–September 13, 2026.

RA: Your practice moves fluidly across media—text, video, sculpture, and installation. How has this interdisciplinary approach developed over time, and how does it shape the way you think about storytelling within An Alphabet of Unfolding?

MK: My work often starts with questions, and then I move through a process of exploring different ways of considering the questions through different mediums. An interdisciplinary approach comes to me intuitively because I feel like different mediums hold invitations to speak in different registers. With this exhibition, the sculptures made from hand-wrapping copper wire in yarn and thread speak a language of softness that is also able to hold structure, to expand in space through a language of delicacy. The title of the exhibition evokes the notion of “unfolding” and I am really at a juncture in my practice where I am uplifting the nature of process, flow, unfolding, becoming, unfurling. Rather than pursuing fixity, I am really interested in considering how a work can be complete while also still being alive and responsive. With some of the works in the exhibition, such as the large-scale sculptural installation Networks of Protection, this is reflected in how the work is responsive to the gallery at Bemis in terms of how it is installed and literally unfolds in the space. I’m really interested as well in how visitors in the gallery then become part of the work’s unfolding.

This exhibition really grew out of me reflecting on questions around what it means to find and forge a sense of home and belonging across multiple spaces. This is informed by how I grew up—moving around often and needing to adapt to different environments. Also with my parents being from Kenya and Liberia, I grew up hearing about homes that were elsewhere that I also had a familial connection to across distance. In this time of accelerated displacement and migration, where the movement of people and communities is affected by the search to sustain livelihoods, to escape war and conflict, to find greater possibility—this idea of home is something I keep coming back to. It also feels important to hold the nuance of this—you may emigrate to find better opportunity in one sense, then be faced with racism and other forms of discrimination in another sense. And your access to ease within movement may be restricted based on who you are or where you are coming from. A work like A(f)mrkn Dream is in conversation with this.

Home, of course, is also food, nourishment, and connection. The smell and taste of a particular dish can dissolve borders and distance. An Ode to Country Rice and An Ode to Cassava (Leaf, Root) nod to this as well.

In terms of storytelling, I keep coming back to the gesture of reaching. In this exhibition, I am exploring this through the reaching of painted hands and limbs, the reaching of extensions within soft sculpture and the way that they are installed in space, and the reaching of tree limbs and branches that appear within photography and video. Reaching relates to a desire to find connection across distance.

RA: The exhibition brings together new and past works. How do you see your earlier projects informing the ideas of hybridity, memory, and sustenance that are central to this presentation at Bemis?

MK: I have recently been reflecting on the notion of the iterative in relation to my practice. There are certain questions I am asking in the work over a long period of time such as: How might the language of softness be used to respond to societal hardness? This considers softness as material (for instance, with my use of yarn in sculpture and installation), softness as a sound (as in how I approach singing in soothing tones, inspired by lullabies), and softness as a way of relating to loved ones through acts like sharing conversation and meals.

In thinking about sustenance, I also have been reflecting on Nebraska’s prominent role in national food production and agriculture. When buying food pre-packaged at the grocery store, for instance, it might feel a bit removed from how a plant looks as it grows, the land that sustains it, and the hands and labor that harvest it. I kept thinking about this while I was making An Ode to Country Rice, each step a long process by hand: rolling out clay, extruding lines of clay, cutting small pieces meant to evoke grains of rice, drying them, individually painting each clay grain to seal them. I have been finding solace in long processes of making by hand that really invite a meditation through process. It offers a way to slow down in these times of acceleration. It has also been prompting me to think about how the hand—and time—within certain kinds of processes really can’t be replaced.

While the exhibition is comprised of mostly new works, two of the works were existing or are reconfigured here. I wanted to include A(f)mrka (2021) because it offers an important historical grounding for my ongoing work reflecting on Liberian and US history. And the installation Networks of Protection consists of some sculptural elements that were previously exhibited in a different adaptation. Here they are reconfigured and enhanced. I see this sculptural installation as an evolving, ongoing work that is responsive to different environments, and I am excited to adapt it to the space of Bemis.

RA: As a Kenyan-Liberian-American, your work often engages the layered identities of the African diaspora. How do you navigate these intersecting histories in your practice, and how have they evolved in recent years?

MK: I am engaged in a long-term process of exploring the African diaspora in my work. In my earliest work, I was considering the African diaspora in a more conceptual sense, then I began to understand that I needed to engage more in embodied research, to expand my understanding through travel, conversations, and embodied encounters. I am grateful for artist residency and fellowship experiences and grants that have enabled me to travel to different geographies with strong Afro-diasporic connections, spanning Africa, the Caribbean/Latin America, and Europe; such as Liberia where I have family roots, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, France, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. I’ve really been thinking about how to hold space for the nuance and specificity of different geographies within African and its diasporas, while also understanding points of connection and intersection. I’m also aware of how Black histories and African origins have been and continue to be suppressed in many places. A lot of mainstream discourse still talks about “Africa” as siloed and existing in the past, when in fact I have found Africa to be present and evolving everywhere I have traveled in the world, and it feels important to uplift this, and how this intersects with that idea of hybridity, and what is born from cross-cultural encounters over time and place.

I am very interested in the multiplicities and hybridities that intersect with diasporic identities and experiences. Sometimes it feels as though, here in the US in particular, the mainstream society seeks to distill complex identities into singular identities that can easily translate to a legible box to be checked on a form. However, so many of our identities far exceed this over-simplification. I was born and raised in the southern US to parents from Liberia and Kenya. And Liberia and Kenya are both multicultural countries with long histories of migration and cross-cultural encounters that precede colonization, and then that also have been very shaped by their particular histories of colonization. For instance, on my Liberian side, I am aware of familial heritage that spans West Africa, North America, the Caribbean, and Europe. I find it important to hold this multiplicity, learning more about the threads I can trace, and also understanding that there are certain threads that I can only trace through other forms of knowing and remembering that come from an internal, ancestral space. Recently I have been sitting with the unresolved nature of diaspora—within my own diasporic experience, I am holding space for the gaps, the unresolved, the curiosity, the yearning, the loss, the celebration, and the connection, all at once.

RA: What role does nourishment—both literal and metaphorical—play in your thinking about cultural continuity and survival?

MK: With this exhibition, I have been reflecting on food traditions, particularly in relation to Liberian cooking. I grew up on Liberian foods lovingly cooked by my Liberian mother in our diasporic homes in Tennessee and Kentucky, such as cassava leaf, palm butter, fufu, jollof rice, and plantain. The painting An Ode to Cassava (Leaf, Root) was inspired by this, while also highlighting how the cassava plant leaves bear a resemblance to outstretched hands, which connects to the idea of reaching which I often engage in my practice as a way of considering diasporic yearning and searching for connection. The bulbous cassava roots are cooked and pounded into fufu which are starchy balls used to soak up greens, stew, and sauce. The leaves themselves are cooked with palm oil into a delicious stewed sauce that is, as Liberians say, sweet o!

There is also the clay sculptureAn Ode to Country Rice which honors the nutritious red rice indigenous to Liberia, while also nodding to rice as an incredibly important dietary staple in Liberian cooking. When I started making work for the show, I was honed in on thinking about specific foods, then as the work continued to develop, I also began thinking more about nourishment of the mind, body, and spirit in an expanded sense. How do we, as individuals and communities, find and forge spaces of soothing and nourishment to carry us through times of abundance and times of drought—societally, culturally, and materially? Food insecurity is also a prevalent problem for many people in Liberia, just as it is in low-income and working-class communities in NYC where I am based, and globally. I am always thinking about how ideas such as nourishment operate on small and large scales, and how to acknowledge lack and abundance together.

RA: Your sculptural installation of copper wire and thread suggests not only a continual connection to the earth, rooting in space, but also it acts as a “drawing in space.” How do you approach material and form as a way of mapping relationships between body, landscape, and memory?

MK: I have been drawn to working with copper wire as it is a material related to the flow of energy. It is used in routing electricity, and it is also used in healing practices. It is soft and pliable, and I follow its direction when working on the sculptural forms that combine to form the installation Networks of Protection. I am grateful to the copper wire for sharing its strength with me and teaching me about what it means to be both strong and flexible at the same time, to both hold and transmit energy. I wrap the wire in cotton yarn and cotton thread, which I see as a protective gesture that also references jewelry-making and hairdressing traditions from West and East Africa. I am grateful to the cotton yarn and thread for sharing their softness with me and teaching me about protection and shielding as acts of care and generosity.

The process of hand-wrapping the wire in thread and yarn is long, meditative, and very embodied; it is like a choreography in the studio of movement, bending, reaching, wrapping, and constantly adjusting. Then, when exhibiting the work, I am very interested in how the bodies of the visitors in the space become a part of this network and the flow of energy also. The branching forms in the installation speak to the rhizomatic and mycelial, to the branching of root systems, veins, arteries, tree limbs, and rivers. I am really inviting a reflection on bodies of all kinds: human, plant, water, and beyond. This installation is iterative and this presentation at Bemis builds on a previous installation at Smack Mellon in 2024. While previously the work was part of a video installation, at Bemis the installation is presented in conversation with the sunlight and plant life just outside the gallery windows.

These sculptures are teaching me about what it means to oscillate between contracting and expanding; how a singular unit may seem slight, but through a process of accumulation, a whole is formed that becomes more than the sum of its parts. There is vitality and resilience in collectivity.

RA: In works like A(f)mrka, you explore the entangled histories of Liberia and the United States through sound and image. What do you think about the emotional resonance of these histories, particularly in relation to diasporic memory?

MK: It was important for me to include A(f)mrka because it offers an important historical grounding, while doing this in the language of poetics through a video poem, which is able to express the emotions connected to this history in a way reading facts in a textbook does not. The history of the role that the American Colonization Society, and by extension US “founding fathers” and government officials, played in the founding of Liberia in the 1800s as a place to deport and resettle formerly enslaved and free-born Black people from North America abroad amid rising racial tensions is yet another history that is under-acknowledged and actively suppressed in the US. I never learned about this history in school, and in our current sociopolitical climate, Black history is being even further actively erased and buried.

Liberian history is also American history. It is diasporic history. It is transnational history. And it also precedes and exceeds that chapter. Liberia became Africa’s first modern republic upon declaring independence from the American Colonization Society in 1847, and this is also important as it stood as a beacon of sovereignty and possibility on the continent during the anti-colonial movements for liberation and independence across Africa in the 1950s and beyond, and provided material support to those movements. Important cultural figures like Nina Simone from the US and Miriam Makeba from South Africa found refuge and creative community in Liberia during the 1970s. Yet the nation transformed greatly in a period racked by civil unrest and civil war from 1980 to 2003 and is still in a process of rebuilding. All of these textures of history and memory intertwine and inform what it means to consider the past and potential futures of Liberia, and of the US.

RA: Tenderness and care seem to be underlying forces throughout your practice. How do you define these concepts within your work, and how do they manifest visually or materially in the exhibition?

MK: For me, tenderness is related to softness, to a desire to remain receptive and porous to the world, holding fast to the deep belief that renewal and restoration are or will be available to us. I am interested in care, less as something outwardly declared, and more as an orientation, something expressed through repeated gestures, through ways of being and relating that are enacted in daily interactions on scales both small and large. I love how adrienne maree brown talks about daily actions as fractal, how the small acts reverberate into larger social dynamics. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the large-scale dreaming for a more balanced world asks to be mirrored in the ways we relate to ourselves, each other, and our environment through our daily, even quiet, interactions.

I also consider the act of reckoning with history to be an act of care for the past, present, and future. Toni Morrison talked about how the past continues to live on in and shape the present, and I find it important to acknowledge and contend with this within my practice. At the same time, I am compelled to do this with a deep dedication to the reparative. Here I think about how bell hooks writes about love as a verb, something we enact within interpersonal relationships and also need to increase on a societal level. I increasingly seek to uplift soothing within my work, offering tenderness as balm. This is reflected in my use of soft materials such as yarn and fabric, in the soft layers of sound with my video pieces, in the soft seating provided for visitors, and in the imagery of trees and plant life that appear in video and photographic imagery. Trees are wise and comforting, steadfast presences that embody an ancient tenderness and care, transmitting insights about interdependence and interconnection. The Listening series of photographic prints on fabric relates to this as well.

RA: The exhibition includes a text piece that inhabits an in-between space. What role does language play in your practice, and do you see text functioning differently from your visual work?

MK: My work often starts with writing, small phrases or grouping or words, and it’s as though word sketches are just as important in my process as visual sketches. I’m really interested in language as a malleable material, something we can stretch and bend and crawl inside, something to hold and that can hold us. I have found refuge in writing and in reading from an early age, in their magic quality to contain their own worlds and bend the contours of this one. I also think about the ways in which folks throughout parts of Africa and its diasporas mold language, combining English or other externally imposed languages with indigenous languages, how folks innovate and language becomes a living, personalized, constantly evolving entity. In various works in the exhibition, such as the video Lullabies for the Distance/d I: Grain Coast, and the painting Fight for your pekin, I’m also using Liberian Creole English to uplift the unique linguistic innovation that is part of one of the Englishes I grew up hearing. The English language itself now holds multiplicity, and I’m heartened to find space to maneuver within it.

For the text piece Where does it live in our bodies?, I am very interested in opening up language as a space to invite participation. I’ve been working with some questions around embodiment, history, and memory that I first started writing during a residency in Cairo, Egypt through the 2025 Àsìkò Art School program. One of these questions is: “Where does the hope live in your body?” I incorporated this question into Lullabies for the Distance/d I: Grain Coast and I also wanted to present it as a visual piece that visitors can respond to. It’s an invitation to bring presence and awareness to one’s own body, and also to actively consider where to locate hope in a time of widespread global inequity, violence, and loss. How do we find the spaces from which to keep dreaming and keep trying? People are invited to respond through their own words, or through a drawing, or through another means they choose on postcards made available in the exhibition, which can then be added to the wall, becoming part of the piece. It goes back to this idea of the possibility in the collective—all of our visions of hope are important, and are very much needed.

RA: Across the exhibition, there is a strong sense of continuity—between places, materials, and generations. How do you envision your work contributing to broader conversations about resilience, adaptation, and care within the African diaspora?

MK: My work grows out of a deep investment in finding and forging spaces of possibility and connection across place, space, and time. Diasporic experiences can be marked by displacement and loss, yet I am also curious about what grows from the gaps. For me, the idea of soothing has become a touchstone in my practice in consideration of the ways in which sociopolitical structures shape not only material realities, but also the internal landscapes and psyches of the people living within them. How might a low-sung note hold the heart when it is in need of comfort?

There have been many conversations about representation (and the limits of representation) in contemporary art, yet there are certain kinds of representation I have not yet encountered, even as someone who regularly visits exhibitions. So for me to, for example, integrate Liberian Creole English into my work is also to affirm it as an important language that deserves to highlighted and shared, as in the mixed-media work Fight for your pekin and within the video Lullabies for the Distance/d I: Grain Coast. For context, “pekin” means “children” and is pronounced something akin to “bee-gin.” In Liberia, there are multiple ethnic groups such as the Vai, Bassa, Kpelle, and Kissi, and this Creole English has been a way to communicate across different ethnic languages, while also incorporating elements from them. In other parts of West Africa you might hear similar words. I also integrate Black American English into this work as in previous work, again as a way of honoring the creativity and innovation that is part of it. For instance, I use the phrase “maybe some past ain’t even past yet.” To me this has more heft than phrasing it another way.

In the mixed-media works on canvas, I sew shapes of wax print fabric into the compositions, which nods to a quilting tradition in Liberia that embodies a hybridization of Southern US and West African symbols and aesthetics. The wax print fabric comes in many varieties and is widely worn throughout Liberia and other parts of the continent. Fight for your pekin incorporates this, and the painted letters in this piece are in a palette of red, white, and blue. While these are the national colors of the US, they are also the national colors of Liberia tracing back to its colonial history.

A few years ago, someone asked me what my favorite art material was, and I said “the alphabet.” I think about the alphabet in terms of language and letters as building blocks, and also visually in terms of symbols and shapes that don’t always need a fixed meaning; they can continue to unfold, shift, accumulate, and respond over time. With this exhibition, I’ve been thinking about the different elements and materials I’m working with as building blocks that combine to uplift this idea of multiplicity as a continuous process of becoming. This relates to the experience of diasporic existence as a process rather than a fixed state. I think there is freedom to be found in embracing mutability, and in embracing an ongoing unfolding as a way of being and relating in the navigation of a shifting world.