SJSU Art Galleries Tuesday Night Lecture: Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle (Olomidara Yaya) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, writer, performer, and healer. Her practice fluctuates between collaborations and participatory projects with alternative gallery spaces within various communities, to projects that are intimate and based upon her private experiences in relationship to historical events and contexts. Her practice serves as a bridge, merging the intersections of art, activism, spirituality, and healing as tools for retrieval through the usage of reiki, sound healing, divination, channeling, and mediumship. A term that has become a mantra for her practice is the “Historical Present,” as she examines the residue of history and how it affects our contemporary world perspective. Hinkle is the recipient of several awards: The Cultural Center for Innovation’s Investing in Artists Grant, Social Practice in Art (SPart-LA), The Jacob K Javits Fellowship for Graduate Study, The Fulbright Fellowship, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artists Award, the SF MOMA 2019 SECA Award and The Hellman Fellowship from UC Berkeley. She has artworks in the private collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of Art at The University of New Hampshire, The San Jose Museum of Art, BAMPFA, and SF MoMA. Her writing has appeared in Obsidian Journal, Artforum and Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics. She is the author of Kentifrications: Convergent Truths & Realities (2018) published by Sming Sming Books & Occidental College, SIR (2019) published by Litmus Press, and The Evanesced [Tarot Deck & Guidebook] Co-Published by KACH Studio Press & Sming Sming Books.

This lecture is supported by the College of Humanities & the Arts’ Artistic Excellence Programming Grant.