KATES-FERRI PROJECTS is thrilled to present Adorned Terrains: Portals of Possibility, the first solo exhibition of Ashanté Kindle with the gallery between February 26 to March 29, 2025, with a reception on Saturday, March 1st 6-8pm at 561 Grand Street, NYC 10002.

The show features Kindle’s new works, exploring the memory, identity, and humanity through the specific cultural lens of Black hair’s textures and adornments. The celebrated emerging artist was included in the summer must-see exhibition list of 2023 in The New York Times and two of Artsy's artist lists–10 MFA Grads on the Rise in 2022 and 10 Emerging Black Artists to watch, which underscores her rising prominence. 

Kindle’s practice evolved from personal and cultural histories of hair through deep research to weaving together the materiality of hair adornments like barrettes, cowrie shells, beads, and knockers with bold, cosmic palettes, and layered textures. These elements converge to create imaginative landscapes that connect the intimate to the universal. Having braided hair in high school to earn a living, Kindle shares, "Hair has always been a space of freedom and care for me, it’s a place where creativity and autonomy have lived, shaped by personal and cultural histories." 

At the heart of this body of work is Kindle’s deep engagement with Blackness as a space of resilience, creation, and connection. Using textures reminiscent of rivers, waves, and mountains, her paintings, like Eclipsed Elegance (2024), transform Black hair into a map of lived experiences. As the exhibition title suggests, Kindle draws conceptual parallels to braided hair patterns that carried paths to freedom and the cosmos as a guide for escape, honoring these histories while imagining new spaces of care and connection. The shape of her canvases, often a circle or oval, also function as both a representation of the crown of the head—a site of beauty and vulnerability—and a portal to imagined landscapes and into the vastness of the cosmos.

Kindle’s journey into painting is rooted in her self-taught exploration of light and shadow, informed by her background in black-and-white photography. Black, as a color, was the conceptual starting point for her use of monochrome. As a non-color color, it carries the accumulation of color and histories. Developed during her time as the only Black student in her masters of fine art program in Connecticut, this approach on black reflects her nuanced understanding of color theory, inspired by the likes of Josef Albers to Kerry James Marshall. Her new works explore the idea of dyeing Black hair into different monochromatic palettes.

Kindle’s practice joins a rich lineage of artists who use Black hair as a central motif, such as Sonya Clark, who she calls “Auntie Sonya”. Understanding that other artists uses hair from their own particular positionality, she distinguishes her work through its focus on abstracted emotions built on memories, materiality, and texture. Kindle’s early works were attempts to recreate the finger wave in her mom’s hair. Storing history and story like an archive, her work conjures the feeling of being as unstoppable as the moment one steps out of the hair salon. These memory portals evoke child-like joy that taps into viewers’ own associations of care. 

Kindle’s Adorned Terrains: Portals of Possibility offers viewers an invitation to step into landscapes of memory, resilience, and connection. By transforming Black hair into intricate maps of lived experience and possibility, she bridges the personal narratives with universal themes of care and humanity. Her work asserts that Black hair is more than a medium—it is a portal to boundless creativity and a living archive of shared stories, past and future.

Bio: Ashanté Kindle is a multidisciplinary artist best known for her abstract sculptural wave paintings. Originally from Clarksville, TN, she received her BFA from Austin Peay State University (2019) and her MFA from The University of Connecticut (2022). Now based in Brooklyn, NY, Kindle was a NXTHVN Cohort 04 Fellow and has exhibited her work nationally at venues including Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, Red Arrow Gallery, Sean Kelly Gallery, and most recently in solo exhibitions at Johnson Lowe Gallery and Austin Peay State University. Her work was recently acquired by The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT. She is represented by Red Arrow Gallery.

Artist Statement: My work is a deeply personal exploration of memory, identity, and possibility through the lens of Black hair. Hair has always been a source of freedom and self-expression for me—a living archive that holds personal stories and generational experiences. I think about the joy and care tied to hair, especially in my childhood. Acts of adornment with objects like barrettes, beads, and bows brought me a sense of beauty and pride, shaping my understanding of identity and self-worth. These materials have become central to my practice, carrying a magic that I want to honor and reimagine.

Inspired by the boundless potential of the cosmos, my work transforms fragments of memory and moments of joy into cosmic landscapes of healing and transformation. These landscapes exist at the intersection of abstraction and familiarity. For some, the textures, colors, and forms reflect a broader language of abstraction. For others and me, they evoke personal memories and shared connections tied to hair and identity. This duality allows me to create works that feel both intimate and expansive, grounded in the past while opening space for new ways to tell stories and celebrate identities.

Through my practice, I create space for freedom, joy, and healing. It is about honoring the role Black hair has played in shaping my sense of self and exploring its power in storytelling and transformation. My work reflects care, creativity, and the infinite possibilities that Black hair offers as a form of expression and reinvention.

Available Art Work from Exhibition 

Video of exhibition on YouTube