Nneka Kai is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and educator based in upstate New York. Her research-driven studio practice explores the intersections of fiber histories, Black visual aesthetics, and identity politics, with particular attention to materiality as a site of cultural memory and resistance.Kai received her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from Georgia State University. She currently teaches sculpture at Pratt Munson and has guest curated an exhibition with the Art Institute of Chicago’s Textiles Department. She is the recipient of the 2023 Artadia Award (Atlanta). Her work has been exhibited nationally, including solo and group exhibitions in Atlanta, Chicago, Berkeley, and New York.

 

My studio practice begins with the question: What is the free Black feminine form? I explore this inquiry through hair—as material, language, and conceptual framework—using interdisciplinary methods that include fiber, sculpture, sound, and performance. Drawing from textile techniques such as braiding, coiling, and stitching, I reimagine these processes in dialogue with and in tension against found forms. The intimate, soft, and malleable is brought into conversation with the public, hard, and rigid, creating sites of friction where vulnerability and resistance coexist. I approach hair as an access point for engaging the complexities of identity, positioning, and embodiment. Through abstraction and gesture, my work interrogates how the past, present, and future remain precariously intertwined, offering space to consider how materiality might be continually negotiated rather than resolved.