BIO + headshot

Kenya (Robinson) is a community-taught artist from Gainesville, Florida. A socialite, philanthropist, producer, and international southerner, (Robinson) investigates gender, consumerism, and ability through unexpected performative actions and sculptural gestures. (Robinson) is incredibly committed to their craft, from BLIXEL: The (Re)Stock Image Project, a photographic repository featuring people of unambiguously African descent, to the #WHITEMANINMYPOCKET, in which the artist carried a small, corporate-clad, plastic figure as a talismanic reminder that “whiteness is an idea not restricted to phenotype, gender, orientation, or nationality.” Similarly, (Robinson)’s work seeks to help their audience reevaluate their place in the hierarchy of gender, race, and exploitation. In 2018, (Robinson) won the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, presented by The Orlando Museum of Art and underwritten by Gail and Michael Winn. Her sculptural work has been exhibited at Pioneer Works, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Flaten Museum at St. Olaf College, and the 60 Wall Street Gallery of Deutsche Bank. Her sculpture, Commemorative Headdress of Her Journey Beyond Heaven, was acquired by the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture for its permanent collection in 2014. A contributor to the Huffington Post, Modern Painters, and the Opinion section of The New York Times, (Robinson) won an Emerging Artist Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in 2015, and a Creative Capital Award for Emerging Fields in 2016. They will also be featured in the forthcoming exhibition catalogue for the exhibition, All Eyez On Me: Hip Hop, Style, and Contemporary Art, at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

04/08/2022