I’m partnering with artfare.com and griffin editions to make a limited first run of plateaus (banished from drowning series) available TO THE PUBLIC
In 2016 I returned to my roots in photography and began developing the Plateaus series. Plateaus is an ongoing series with new works being produced each year. Each 32 x 40 inch Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper is mounted on Dibond with a wooden brace and cleave on back. This 2020 limited edition first run is produced at Griffin Editions in New York. Works from the Plateaus series have been exhibited at the Drawing Center in New York City and at Project Rowhouses in Houston, TX. The first five prints in the Plateaus series are currently available for purchase via Artfare.com .
Nsenga Knight, 2016/ 2020, Plateau #1 (Banished from Drowning Series), 32 x 40 inches, Photography/ Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper mounted on Dibond
New York, NY – May 12, 2019 – The Pollock-Krasner Foundation has awarded Nsenga Knight a $20,000 grant during its 2018-2019 grant cycle. This year’s grantees and award recipients include artists from 18 states, Puerto Rico, and 17 countries. During its 2018-2019 grant cycle the Pollock-Krasner Foundation has awarded $3,168,000 to 111 artists and 12 organizations . The 124 grants provided invaluable support to national and international artists and not-for-profit organizations. These highly competitive grants provide critical professional support to artists around the globe, enabling them to create new work, offset living expenses, and prepare for exhibitions. The Foundation has also provided Emergency Relief Grants to artists affected by recent hurricanes and California wildfires. Since its inception in 1985, the Foundation has awarded more than 4,510 grants in 77 countries, for a total of nearly $74 million.
With the support of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant Knight will complete a series of text-based paintings entitled Tawaf/ Sa’y and two large bodies of abstract print works—the Plateau and Chicken Scratch series. Her interdisciplinary work spans photography, printmaking, painting, drawing, installation and social practice. Unfolding across these media, and informed by her upbringing as a first-generation Black American Muslim woman, her work synthesizes influences from Islamic art, Western abstraction, and Black aesthetics.
Nsenga Knight, 2013, Tawaf/ Sa’y series, 3 of 36 paintings 22.5 X 22.5 inches each, oil stick, olive oil, and gesso on vegetable parchment paper
“At the core of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s mission is fostering the work and development of artists, and our 2018-19 grant and award recipients highlight the impact we can have due to Lee Krasner’s legacy,” said Ronald D. Spencer, Chairman and CEO of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. “In addition, through our support of institutions such as the Barbican Centre and their upcoming Lee Krasner retrospective and catalogue, and the Katonah Museum of Art’s exhibition of the work of Krasner and other women artists who participated in the groundbreaking 9th Street Show, we are continuing to advance much-needed scholarship.”
ABOUT NSENGA KNIGHT
Nsenga Knight was born in 1981 in Brooklyn, New York. She currently lives and works in Cairo, Egypt and New York. She has exhibited work at the Drawing Center, New York, NY; Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Project Rowhouses, Houston, TX; Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, Pennsylvania; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Brooklyn, NY; Amistad Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York, NY; PS1 MoMA among others.
Knight has held artist residencies at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Galveston Artist Residency in Galveston, Texas, Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia, Film/Video Arts Center in New York, and was a BCAT/ Rotunda Gallery Multimedia Artist in Resident in Brooklyn, NY. She was most recently a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, and a recipient of a Durham Arts Council grant, Southern Constellations Fellowship, the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant, and Brooklyn Arts Council grants. From 2016-2017 Knight was an Open Sessions artist in resident at the Drawing Center in New York. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in Film Production at Howard University.
ABOUT POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 through the generosity of Lee Krasner, a leading abstraction expressionist painter and spouse of Jackson Pollock. Based in New York and operating internationally, the Foundation’s grants enable artists to advance their practice. Recipients of Pollock-Krasner grants have noted the generous and critical impact of this funding in allowing concentrated time to work in the studio and prepare for exhibitions.
To provide additional support to its grantees, the Foundation maintains an up to date and comprehensive Grantee Image Collection representing the work of artists who have received grants since 1985. For more information, including guidelines for grant applications, visit the Foundation’s website: http://www.pkf.org.
Make Safe, Make Space, 2014 lithograph print series with sewn muslin and fabric bricks , Photo courtesy of Justin Perry and Smith Gallery
Make Safe, Make Space is featured at NC A&T University in the 2019 Southern Constellations Exhibition— a multi-media show highlighting the work of the Southern Constellations (SoCo) Fellowship program and curatorial initiative to extend experimental arts practices, networks, and dialogues in the South. Curated by Elsewhere in collaboration with past SoCo Fellow Jessica Gaynelle Moss, the show at A&T profiles selected works from the curatorial initiative.
Make Safe, Make Space, 2014 lithograph print series with sewn muslin and fabric bricks , Photo courtesy of Justin Perry and Smith Gallery
Make Safe, Make Space is featured at NC A&T University in the 2019 Southern Constellations Exhibition— a multi-media show highlighting the work of the Southern Constellations (SoCo) Fellowship program and curatorial initiative to extend experimental arts practices, networks, and dialogues in the South. Curated by Elsewhere in collaboration with past SoCo Fellow Jessica Gaynelle Moss, the show at A&T profiles selected works from the curatorial initiative.
Make Safe, Make Space, 2014 lithograph print series with sewn muslin and fabric bricks , Photo courtesy of Justin Perry and Smith Gallery
Make Safe, Make Space is featured at NC A&T University in the 2019 Southern Constellations Exhibition— a multi-media show highlighting the work of the Southern Constellations (SoCo) Fellowship program and curatorial initiative to extend experimental arts practices, networks, and dialogues in the South. Curated by Elsewhere in collaboration with past SoCo Fellow Jessica Gaynelle Moss, the show at A&T profiles selected works from the curatorial initiative.
Nsenga Knight, Other Stars Don’t Behave So, 2013 ink and wax drawing, 20 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist.
THOUSAND OAKS, CA, September 25, 2018 – Nsenga Knight: Other Stars, an exhibition ofgeometric drawings, text paintings, photographs and oral history recordings by Nsenga Knight will be on view at the Kwan Fong Gallery at California Lutheran University from August 17 – October 11, 2018. In conjunction with the Other Stars exhibition, art historian Halima Taha will present on the work of Knight in the context of the canon of African American artwork, with a focus on the overlapping influences of Western and Islamic abstraction in her work Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 6:00pm at the Ullman Conference Center 100/101at CLU.
The exhibition includes a survey of Knight’s works from as early as 2007 such as As the Veil Turns her photography, video and oral history project on Black women in her hometown Brooklyn Muslim community who converted to Islam prior to 1975 and pioneered some of New York’s earliest still-existing mosques; and more recent works that place Malcolm X and Ali Shariati’s pilgrimage memoirs in sociological and formal conversation with Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Al-Bīrūnī’s 10th-century astronomical renderings.
Nsenga Knight As the Veil Turns (Shameelah), 2007 Archival Inkjet Print, 30 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Each of my artistic projects is responding to my self-reflexive question: Who am I and what is my place in this world? My artworks exist as invitations to examine new possibilities that broaden our collective imaginations and challenge traditional boundaries of race, nationhood and religion. —Nsenga Knight
On October 9, 2018 Taha will present a discussion about Knight as a contemporary artist working in film, photography, paint, and printmaking, exploring her place as an interdisciplinary artist whose visual statements are universal, yet part of the visual culture of the African Diaspora. Given the meteoric growth of art by artists of African descent in the worldwide market, Taha will discuss Knight’s presence within it and will highlight the market interest in work that provides insight into the global experience while ultimately provoking self-reflection.
Knight (b. 1981, Brooklyn, NY) has exhibited work at the Drawing Center, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, the New Museum for Contemporary Art and MoMA PS1. She received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and BA in Film from Howard University. She lives and works in Cairo, Egypt and New York.
Taha is a best-selling author, curator, appraiser and independent scholar. Taha is most well-known for her groundbreaking bestseller, Collecting African American Art: Works on Paper and Canvas (Crown), the first book to validate African American art as a viable asset and commodity within the international marketplace; which created a new market for publications and exhibitions on African American art. Her work advocates the importance and value of collecting art made by American artists of African descent. She has degrees in Liberal Arts, Arts Management & Cultural Policy from Sarah Lawrence College and New York University. Currently, Taha is the President of TahaThinks,LLC, a company that provides art advisory, appraisal, collection management, and speaker services.
The Kwan Fong Gallery is located in Soiland Humanities Center at the California Lutheran University. Admission is free. The gallery is open to the public 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Street parking is by permit 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Parking lots are located on Mountclef Boulevard north and south of Olsen Road.
I read a lot of articles, chapters from books, watch and listen to lectures, but I haven’t sat down to complete reading a book from cover to cover in a while.
Since I was maybe 10-years old and learned about the Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, I felt that this exception in the thirteenth amendment was a loophole that could in practice re-enslave Black people.
Many of us may not realize that even when Black people were enslaved in the Americas, many other Black folks were free. According to my family’s oral history, on my mothers side, some of our African ancestors came to the Americas freely and were never enslaved (I have to ask my grandfather more about this). What was the responsibility of those free Black people to those who were enslaved? I would like to think that if I were my free Black self over 150 years ago, I would have been working to free my enslaved brothers and sisters. Here we are in 2015 and too many Black people are still being enslaved through mass incarceration. One of the things that prompted me to ask “what can I do?” and finally pick up The New Jim Crow is the Rauschenberg Foundation’s call to artists for project proposals that WILL FOCUS ON RACIAL JUSTICE THROUGH THE LENS OF MASS INCARCERATION.I didn’t apply for the grant because I am not doing any projects that deal with this issue, but I am so intrigued by the possibility that artists can effect some change in the incarceration of Black people in particular through our artistic practices. That’s a tall order! I know there is so much more that I can do to think around and use my artistic practice to effect issues that I care about. Mass incarceration and reparations are two related issues that I am researching.
I’m also inspired by Michelle Alexander because she decided to write this groundbreaking book in the midst of giving birth to three children over the course of 4-years. Motherhood has given me a huge burst of creative energy too. I relate to her working between naps and at odd hours. That’s also how I’ve kept my artistic practice going for my first two years of being a mom. That’s how I’m writing this blog post too. Time is precious and it has to be directed towards achieving important goals. Becoming a parent has made me ask myself what more can I do through my artistic practice to impact the lives of other people and constantly create work that addresses the issues that matter to me.
So, alhumdulilah, I am super excited and GRATEFUL that I have been blessed with the amazing opportunity to go back in time a little bit to return to Houston and Galveston to exhibit in the Island Time exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Back in 2011 and 2012 I did a yearlong artist residency at the Galveston Artist Residency. It was an amazing year of growth for me. I was 1-year out of grad school and there I was on a little island off the east coast of Texas, just 1 hour away from Houston. I had a huge, fabulous studio, a bangin 19th century apartment, a generous stipend and a beach bicycle to boot! Eric Schnell, the Founder/ Director of the residency is also an artist and he was so open and eager to make the residency a success by doing whatever was in his capability to support us in our artistic practice (God bless that man – such a genuine, generous and kind soul). I felt wonderfully supported and it seemed anything was possible. This time of in my life laid an important foundation for me. I even got married while I was an artist in residence at GAR. I was winning ALL the way! SO much of the work I’ve done over the past five years began in Galveston.
Along with Nick Barbee and Kely Sears, I was one of three artists in the inaugural year of this yearlong residency.
It was super quiet most of the time, which I love, and we also had amazing studio visits with curators and writers from all the major museums in Houston and many other fantastic arts institutions around the country. I enjoyed spending time in Houston especially at Project Rowhouses having deep conversations & hanging with other Black artists there during our regular bookclub meetings led by artist/friend/brother Jamal Cyrus.
Aside from the opening at CAMH on Friday and panel discussion on Saturday there’s lots of getting together in Houston and Galveston planned for all of the artists who have done this unique residency over the past four years and everyone who has been a part of this amazing GAR experience. It’s really special that the CAMH would honor us to do an exhibition about our residency program. There will even been an extensive catalog to go along with the show.
I’m also in the current round at Project Rowhouses (I’ll write about that in another post) so this all feels very full-circle. Houston is being really good to me this year. Can’t wait to get some Island Time in for the weekend (inshaAllah).
It’s really early in the AM or, super late at night right now. I usually wake up this time, around 2 or 3 am and stay up for a few hours to zhikr, meditate, pray, read, just be really quiet. Sometimes I get some really great ideas for project at this time. Those ideas come with such clarity, just roaring. I love this time of the day/ night. It’s such a liminal time. All peace.
I was at the Black Artist Retreat last month and I had a really great conversation with another artist who really loves to work at this time, her aunties also apparently love to get up at this time to pray. They are really well balanced people she says.
I wanted to write a little bit about the Black Artist Retreat, it was so intense and so wonderful in too many ways to describe. It’s just really awesome that Theaster Gates has been putting on this retreat for three years now. This was my first year. For the first two days it was just us Black Artist retreating from all over the country, and two from other countries. Lots of deep conversations about Fred Moten’s book, The Undercommons. Fred Moten was there too. Lots of socializing. It was really great to see and meet so many Black Artists in one place. I thought, if I can just do this every year, I’ll be good. Well, I’m good anyway, but my thought really is that the retreat was so different from my every day life in that I don’t see other Black artists anything close to that number on a regular basis. I live in Durham, and it can be really quiet over here. Compared to where I grew up, in Brooklyn and my first art communities throughout New York, this can feel like living in a cave, or making art in a cave. I love it. I’m usually a bit surprised when arts administrators get in touch with me about doing an exhibition. I still have that, ‘how do you even know about me?!’ reaction. That happened to me earlier this year when a curator got in touch with me about participating in their museum’s auction. I had to double check that it wasn’t a fraud email. Then later with the Under Color of Law exhibition I was really floored to be showing with Terry and Carrie Mae Weems especially. But, then it kept happening throughout this year, curators asking me to participate in really awesome projects and shows. I’m grateful. I’ll try to be a little less in shock or suspicious.
Talking about curators, I just read that this curator Omar Kholeif from Egypt by way of many places, most recently the UK is Coming to America! I read a recent interview of his and I was like, OMG, I think we may be kindred art spirits. He said this: “I want to look at the histories of Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and how we draw parallels between those regions and Western knowledge.” Stop playin…! Yes!!! I hope he gets to know my work really well and vis versa. This has been such a big interest of mine since forever. Especially in grad school I was just like, I’mma talk about Malievitch’s Black Square and the Black Cube (Kaaba) at the same time. And I really hated the way art historians seemed to want to separate everything. Like, how can you talk about Klein without talking about Japanese or Chinese calligraphy. That’s just irresponsible. Or talk about Frank Stella without talking about Islamic Geometrical art. Well, I actually saw a talk of his at the Toledo Museum where he says he was influenced by a trip he took to Iran back in the 60’s. I was disappointed that the Art Historian didn’t ask more about that.
Well, talking about Frank Stella… I actually came on here thinking I would also finally blog about my current solo exhibition, White Circle, Black Square, Silver Pentagon. The exhibition is up right in my area in Durham at Room 100 at Goldenbelt Studios. It really looks amazing. I put a lot of work and thought into it, and even reinstalled a wall drawing that I first created back in 2012. That was no small feat. I had to do the math all over again.
Wall Drawing, 2015 install
I love it. I’m glad the gallery was open to me installing it because I know no one has ever done a wall drawing in that space before and deinstalling it (i.e.. painting it over) will be more work than they usually put in to deinstall. But, I love to do a wall drawing whenever I have a solo exhibition. For me, it marks the space as a specific site that needs to be addressed in a unique way with brand new considerations even if all that work in it has been shown elsewhere before. It’s new again. It does make the job of installing a bit more demanding. And for me so far, the wall drawing is the most minimal and abstract piece in the show. For this show it is the white circle, black square, and silver pentagon all in conversation and its the formal inquiry that I’ve been obsessed with for a few years. Those three shapes need to talk. And they do… in my solo exhibition. The work will be up until September 29th, 2015. Goldenbelt is located at 807 East Main St. in Downtown Durham, NC 27701. Room 100 is in the Arts Building #3.
White Circle, Black Square, Silver Pentagon (panorama of exhibition)
That’s also how I’ve kept my artistic practice going for my first two years of being a mom. That’s how I’m writing this blog post too. Time is precious and it has to be directed towards achieving important goals. Becoming a parent has made me ask myself what more can I do through my artistic practice to impact the lives of other people and constantly create work that addresses the issues that matter to me.
a bangin 19th century apartment, a generous stipend and a beach bicycle to boot! Eric Schnell, the Founder/ Director of the residency is also an artist and he was so open and eager to make the residency a success by doing whatever was in his capability to support us in our artistic practice (God bless that man – such a genuine, generous and kind soul). I felt wonderfully supported and it seemed anything was possible. This time of in my life laid an important foundation for me. I even got married while I was an artist in residence at GAR. I was winning ALL the way! SO much of the work I’ve done over the past five years began in Galveston.
Houston is being really good to me this year. Can’t wait to get some Island Time in for the weekend (inshaAllah).
