Numma Yah brings together immersive sculptural installation, soundscape, and projected moving image to reflect on root systems materially and conceptually. Informed by Kawinzi’s Liberian cultural heritage, this exhibition meditates on ideas around protection, inter-connectivity, embodied memory, and the lessons learned from plant life. The title is a Kolokwa (Liberianized English) phrase used to offer words of comfort, uplifting the necessity of creating spaces of soothing in the face of disconnection, and marking Kawinzi’s intention in the work to trace lines of physical and psychic diasporic reconnection and energetic flow.
ARTIST BIO
Miatta Kawinzi is a multi-disciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer. Her work explores practices of re-imagining the self, identity, place, and culture through abstraction and poetics. Of Liberian and Kenyan heritage, Kawinzi was raised in Tennessee and Kentucky and has been based in NYC since 2010. Her work engages interior and exterior landscapes to illuminate themes of inter-connectivity, hybridity, diaspora, and queered temporalities.
Recent exhibitions include “Mami Wata Afrofuturism: 500 Years Back to the [Afro][F]uture” at the Houston Museum of African American Culture, TX (2024), “States of Becoming” touring with Independent Curators International 2022-27 and presented at Des Moines Art Center, IA (2024) and the Africa Center, NY (2022-23), “in pieces…” at PS122 Gallery, NY (2023), and “Soft is Strong,” solo exhibition at CUE Art Foundation, NY (2021). Kawinzi’s work has screened at the Pan African Film Festival with LACMA, CA (2023), Ann Arbor Film Festival, MI where she received the No. 1 African Film Award (2022), and New Orleans Film Festival, LA (2021).
Recent residencies include Residency Unlimited (NY), Smack Mellon (NY), and MacDowell (NH). She is a recipient of the 2024 Creative Capital Award, 2023 Harpo Foundation Grant, 2021-23 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and 2021 NY Artadia Award. She received a BA in Interdisciplinary Art and Cultural Theory from Hampshire College and an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College.
Image: Miatta Kawinzi, Numma Yah, 2024, process still. Courtesy of the Artist.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Lincoln Restler, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
The research, development, and production of Miatta Kawinzi, Numma Yah was supported in part by artist grants from the Jerome Foundation, ARTNOIR, and Harpo Foundation.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Wolf Kahn Foundation, Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, and an Anonymous Donor.
In-kind donations and services are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education and Sage and Coombe Architects.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
