Kevin Claiborne
Bio: Kevin Claiborne is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist whose work examines intersections of identity, social environment, & mental health within the Black American experience. Moving between collage, silkscreen, photography, painting, and sculpture, while frequently using language as material, Claiborne is interested in finding new ways to look at history and its connection to the present. Claiborne holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the historically Black college North Carolina Central University (2012), an M.S. in Higher Education from Syracuse University (2016), and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2021).
Claiborne is currently living and working in Harlem, New York City.
Artist Statement: Currently, my work focuses primarily on intergenerational trauma and memory, mental health within the Black experience, and psychological burdens related to or around identity development. I am interested in using history to find new ways of looking at and understanding the present. Starting with the gaps in my own family history, and the space between ‘what I know vs. what I should know’, the missing information between where my ancestors come from and where I am today, I am digging and mining the sediment of histories, passed down, erased, and avoided.
I often use image and text together, using language as material, constructing and deconstructing sentences into new poems and formations, playing with legibility to change the ways in which the images and text function, both together and individually.
In practice, I use found images from my family archive and my personal book collection, reappropriating text from sociological essays and textbooks, and incorporate several different mediums such as collage, photography, silkscreen, and painting; conceptually, my work joins broader conversations about the reframing of history, and the importance of narrative ownership as a means for survival.
Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2022 understand me, OSMOS, New York, NY. Fragmentation, Sobering Galerie, Paris, France. Artist in Residence Exhibition, OSMOS Station, Stamford, NY
2021 Before I Died I Was Invisible, The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA
2020 BLACK ENOUGH, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY
2019 Double Consciousness 2, UCSB Multicultural Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
2018 A Prescription for Double Consciousness, SB CAST, Santa Barbara, CA. Walking on Water While Black, Sirena Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions: 2022 TORRENTS: Roots of a Future, Cultural DC, Washington, D.C. SAVIGNANO IMMAGINI, SI Fest, Forlì-Cesena, Italy. Arrangements in Black, Phillips, New York, NY. To Knead a Knot, Lower East Side Printshop, New York, NY. Summer Benefit Auction, WORTHLESS STUDIOS, New York, NY. PRESENT POWER/ FUTURE HOPES, The Clemente Center, New York, NY. Tempus Fugit, LKGallery, New York, NY. back & write, OSMOS Gallery, New York, NY
2021 Hereditary, Swivel Gallery, New York, NY. Vocoder, The Macy Art Gallery, New York, NY. Time Won’t Tell, Project Gallery V, New York, NY. The Meeting Point, Regular Normal Gallery, New York, NY. Mrs. Robinson, The Fireplace Project, East Hampton, NY. Varsity Blues, Allouche Gallery, New York, NY. MONOCHROME, Bull Farm 1856, Rock Tavern, NY. Let Freedom Ring Vol. 2, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), New York, NY
2020 Nature Technology II, The Canvas, New York, NY. BLACKNESS IS, Photoville, New York, NY. Once More, With Feeling, UCLA New Wight Biennial, Los Angeles, CA. Ways & Means, Skelf, United Kingdom. In.Oscillations, SITE.Projects London. How We Hear Now: Sound, Language, & Environment, California College of the Arts Architectural Ecologies Lab, San Francisco, CA. The Brightest Midnight, The Pandemic Archive, New York, NY. BABY MOMA, At Peace Gallery, New York, NY
2019 Sisyphean Justice, The Arts Fund, Santa Barbara, CA
Honors & Awards: 2021 Finalist, Not a Monolith, ArtBridge & Facebook Open Arts
2020 Finalist, Aperture Foundation & Baxter St. Camera Club Next Step Award. Grant Recipient, ArtNoir Jar of Love Grant. Finalist, Photolucida Critical Mass Awards. Photography Fellowship, Columbia University School of the Arts
2019-2021 Visual Arts Scholarship, Columbia University School of the Arts
Eduction:
2021 MFA Visual Arts, School of Visual Arts, Columbia University
2016 MS Higher Education Administration, Syracuse University
2012 BS Mathematics, North Carolina Central University
Collections: Whitney Museum of American Art Special Collections, New York, NY. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Social: @kevinclaiborne