Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle: The Evanesced

In The Evanesced, drawings and a performance by California-based artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle bring attention to a painful subject: missing black women in America and the African diaspora, from history to the present day. Hinkle’s abstract “un-portraits” of elusive figures—drawn with handmade brushes and while the artist improvises dances to blues, hip-hop, and Baltimore Club music—pivot between real and imagined narratives representing thousands of black women who have disappeared due to colonialism, human trafficking, homicides, and other forms of erasure. 

On April 27, 2017 Hinkle will perform The Evanesced: Embodied Disappearance in the gallery, during which she will evoke various types of women navigating historical and contemporary contexts. The piece—which includes a soundtrack of whispers, shuffles, and snippets of popular and underground music—adds another dimension to this emotional examination of a fraught part of the Black female experience. The Evanesced is an expression of the #SayHerName movement of mourning, awareness, and healing.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.