Biomythography

Kenyatta A C Hinkle is a multimedia interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and community arts practitioner. Currently engaged in a large-scale project,“Kentifrica Is: Re-imagining Identity,” Hinkle positions Kentifrica -a continent of her ancestral origins that is has amélange of cultures and influences including a close connection to her familial lineage in Kentucky and parts of West Africa, as a meditation on what happens to the movement and lives of bodies that are contextualized by the spaces, geographies, and cultures that they inhabit and or/create. Taking on the roles of an ethnographer, a museum director, a Jeli/griot, and a descendant from Kentifrica, Hinkle adapts various formats of presentation including: essays, interviews, prose poetry, oral storytelling, handmade artifacts, drawings, video, audio and print media to embody a Kentifrican consciousness and identity. Although the project is auto-ethnographic in nature, it merges community arts initiatives by curating spaces/installations that allow viewers to visit this continent as a means of educating about Kentifrica and inspiring viewers to create/name their own identities and origins despite what has been projected onto them historically. The structure of the project invites collaboration with people of all backgrounds and disciplines (artistic, educational, gender, ethnicity, class, geography, etc) to create and/or add to the idea of Kentifrica as a transient morphing cross-culturally inclusive identity.

 

Artist Website