Kenya Robinson

Kenya (Robinson) is a self-taught artist from Gainesville, Florida. Inspired by a rich social community, her work is influenced by the use of mass consumer items as art material. A resident of Brooklyn, NY she is expanding her studio practice to include site-specific installation, printmaking, and sound-performance art. Her debut exhibition, HAIRPOLITIC: The Pursuit of Nappiness, was featured at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in 2008. A current resident of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's WorkSpace residency, recipient of a Brooklyn Arts Council Re-Grant, and funded by the Hudson Country Office of Art and Culture (for her curatorial work: AfricanAmericana), she continues to explore various modes of creativity.

KR: Probably, 'cuz she needed a break. But it would be very quiet, and this (was) time that just she and I would share together. Going to Miss Dot's was fancy. Everything about her was kind of like a caricature - she had these humungous breasts. I still remember them pressing on the back of my head, while she was doing my hair. So, all of these sensations, they affected how I felt about femininity and womanhood. Those are themes that I continue to explore as a human being, as well as an artist.

AH: Let's talk more about the combs and the beads, because they're figuring largely in your practice now.

KR: The combs grew out of a trip that I took on the bus. Usually I would take the subway to my house, but for whatever reason I took the bus, so I was able to see what was going o n in the neighborhood. On one side of the street I counted, like, fifteen hair-related businesses. And it felt like I had seen that before: I'd seen that in LA; I'd seen that in Gainesville. Of course not to the same degree, but this obsession with "hair beauty".

Sometime after seeing that, I went to a dollar store, which I frequent, because they're amazing, and ridiculous, and so American. I saw this wall of combs - there were all different types and shapes and some that I recognized and some that I didn't, and just looking at the shape of them was interesting. So that's where it began. And the beads, I'm working on these headdresses and veils, and beads were a great material to drape and cover and still be very decorative. Also, harkening back to Africa, I'm inspired by indigenous cultures around the world and how beads play a role in them.

AH: I want you to talk a bit about your performance at Rush Arts Gallery for the AMP performance series, co-curated by Rashaad Newsome and myself. It incorporated combs and it seems like a natural progression here in our conversation. Was "Hair Politic: Rhythm and Cues" as presented at Rush an extension of this?

Amanda Simms-Hunt:
Here with Kenya Robinson, artiste extraordinaire [KR chuckles]. So, even though I know these things - where are you from and how would you say that influences your work?

Kenya Robinson:
I am from Gainesville FL, which is in North Central Florida. Despite the glitter and plastic sheen of Miami, it is very southern Georgia-esque in its culture; it's very much the deep South. It continues to inform my work in expected and unexpected ways. Of course I reference my childhood and I think that for a lot of artists part of the process is to get more connected with that child-like space.

But there are some things that are pretty specific to that region of the country, and it pops up whether it's "Hair Politic: Rhythm and Cues" which is based on, if I had to pick a singular moment, going to Miss Dot's and getting my hair pressed for Easter.

AH: Was that a community thing?

KR: Well, my grandmother would press my hair in the wintertime because it was too humid to keep a "look". On Saturday afternoons, it would usually just be she and I; I don't know where my mom would be -

AH: Probably taking some time off from you!

KR: Yes, an extension and also a departure. For a while, I had been thinking about making instruments out of combs. In my research, I discovered this class of instruments called llamelaphones, which are tongued instruments; a comb is essentially that instrument in its make-up. I had a conversation with a friend of mine - Mazz Swift Camlet - she is a violinist that makes experimental sound, along with written work. She said that I needed a contact mic, I didn't even know what that was, but this project, this performance, was pushed forward by these things.

As a participant of Rashaad Newsome's "Shade Compositions", I got a chance to see an artist really work in the performance realm and that you can be that layered in your meaning. I kind of associated performance art with hacks, you know? I didn't see myself in that. With seeing how [he] developed that, it became more real, and something that I actually wanted to do. It really is ushering in a new phase in my art-making process. I'm not afraid of it anymore, and I want it to be more involved. Now I'm thinking about putting together traditional Thai dance, kabuki or masked theater of the Far East, Las Vegas showgirls, and African polyrhythms. That's going to be what "Rhythm and Cues" turns into.

AH: Who in the canon of art history have you looked to for inspiration?

KR: Honestly, most of my influences are not in the art world. I think it's probably more a testament to my na�vet� than it being intentional, though now it has become more so. When I was teaching fashion design, I taught high school students. One of the things that I would often tell them is that if you really want to do 20 something cutting edge and innovative, you can't really look at a fashion magazine and get inspiration. You have to go beyond that, you have to go to other forms: movies, television, theater, dance, anthropology, science. And that happens to be where I get most of my influences from, anthropology especially, because that's what I studied. Anthropology is the study of how human beings adapt to their environment, and I think that art is the way the collective consciousness adapts to our cultural, social, historical, emotional environment. And so I look to that a lot.

I do have contemporaries who are inspirations, but it really is based on my relationship with them. That's how I become more inspired. I usually don't find out that I am like somebody, that my work is created in a similar vein, until after I've created it. Usually I find out about these people at the right time. My ideas are pretty well developed, and so I won't feel like I'm being influenced too much. But it always happens like that. It's usually at that point where seeing that other work doesn't mean that I've copied, but seeing that what I'm doing is enhanced by the approach.

AH: That's an interesting point. I wonder if you remain closed to that during your creative process, and when talking about it in the aftermath, you can re-open yourself to it.