Miatta Kawinzi is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and educator working with sound, space, images, objects, the body, and language to explore practices of re-imagining the self, identity, and culture through abstraction and poetics. Utilizing analog and digital media, she works with themes of selfhood, diaspora, and belonging.
Born in Nashville, TN to a Liberian mother and Kenyan father and based in NYC, she has presented her work in the US, Mexico, South Africa, France, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago, and Liberia. Her work has been presented at the Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PopRally, Red Bull Arts Detroit, BRIC, Maysles Cinema, and IFC Center, among other spaces. Kawinzi received an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College and has been awarded artist residencies in spaces including POV Spark in partnership with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture (NYC, DC, and Venice, Italy), Red Bull Arts Detroit (Detroit, MI), Alfred University’s Institute for Electronic Arts (Alfred, NY), the Cité internationale des arts (Paris, France, with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council), the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE), and the Bag Factory (Johannesburg, South Africa). She received the 2018 Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant, administered by Queer|Art. Kawinzi additionally works as a museum educator, arts workshop facilitator, and professor of art.