In sculpture, photography, video, and mixed media, Kori Newkirk transforms everyday images and objects—often drawn from African-American and pop culture—to explore issues of race, gender, and place, in what the artist calls “ghetto-fabulous conceptualism”. Newkirk came to the art world’s attention in 2001 with the life-size silhouette of a police surveillance helicopter, painted on the wall of the Studio Museum in Harlem in pungent hair pomade. Now he is best known for his signature curtains composed of plastic hair beads arranged to form the images of cityscapes and suburban landscapes. Drawing from his personal experience of identity politics growing up as a black man in upstate New York, Newkirk portrays himself in photos, paintings, and video works with the blurred face of a criminal suspect, or as an extra-terrestrial recently arrived on Planet Earth.
In sculpture, photography, video, and mixed media, Kori Newkirk transforms everyday images and objects—often drawn from African-American and pop culture—to explore issues of race, gender, and place, in what the artist calls “ghetto-fabulous conceptualism”. Newkirk came to the art world’s attention in 2001 with the life-size silhouette of a police surveillance helicopter, painted on the wall of the Studio Museum in Harlem in pungent hair pomade. Now he is best known for his signature curtains composed of plastic hair beads arranged to form the images of cityscapes and suburban landscapes. Drawing from his personal experience of identity politics growing up as a black man in upstate New York, Newkirk portrays himself in photos, paintings, and video works with the blurred face of a criminal suspect, or as an extra-terrestrial recently arrived on Planet Earth.