C O S M I C B O P

iwantwhatshesmokin:

CHEEEUUUHHHH MY HOMIE SKRIM!! AHHHHHHH WE ON BOO!! SO PROUD OF YOU!!!!

contactprojectjournal:

Tonight, CONTACT visited the exhibition Arrivals/Departures. The work of artist Miatta Kawinzi was striking and worth a nod. Though an artist who is known for exercising a myriad of media, in this case Kawinzi made use of pastels and raw materials to build out brightly colored drawings on found material surfaces, fastened to the wall with flat-faced silver screws.

The work in this exhibition was certainly self-reflective, a mediation on geographic site and its impact on the larger concept of nationality and identity. The Kenyan/Liberian Kawinzi followed in suit, showing herself in self-portrait American assimilated aesthetic — squared glasses and what appeared to be a smoking jacket, fully in pastels. The contrast between the unfinished wood surface upon which the portrait was placed, the pastel palette, and the subject matter — Kawinzi herself — provided several layers to unpeel. Standing in a room with the artist and her colleagues I felt a distinct sense of kinship, an integral ingredient to any successful collaboration.

“Emerging” here to seemed to indicate a larger evolution, one that has yet to punctuate itself; I look forward to Kawinzi’s hatching into the larger New York City creative space.