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The Black Index: Performance by Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle. Photo Credit: Tiffany Smith

KACH Studio: Sonic RETRIEVAL
Online Sound Bath by Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle

Sunday, April 3, 4–5 PM

Register here to view the live stream at Leubsdorf Gallery
Register here for the Zoom link

Leubsdorf Gallery will be open for visitors to The Black Index, 11am–4pm, and for Sound Bath attendees only, 4–5pm.
Bertha & Karl Leubsdorf Gallery
132 E 68th St New York
Enter from the south side of 68th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues

This event will take place on Zoom during the last hour of The Black Index on view at the Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College. HCAG will also live-stream the sound bath in the Leubsdorf Gallery for those who would like to gather together to experience the sound bath in the gallery. Space is limited for the gallery’s live stream, so please register in advance.

KACH Studio: Sonic Retrieval will offer a sound bath that focuses on grieving in the midst of the pandemic in relation to the traveling exhibition The Black Index’s final journey to Hunter College. Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle’s work on view in the exhibition, The Evanesced: The Untouchables, features 100 un-portraits of disappeared Black femmes created in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She will be offering a ritual not only to close the exhibition but also to create a sonic space for processing grief. Hinkle will be using a Dark Water and Dusk Gong as well as crystal singing bowls, tuning forks, rattles, and various instruments to offer a virtual experience. Those who want to contemplate the impact of Black death historically and presently can participate via cultivating deep listening as a form of witnessing and inner retrieval.

About Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle (Olomidara Yaya)
Award-winning interdisciplinary visual artist and writer Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, trained Reiki Master and Sound Practitioner, offers unique sonic healing experiences in relation to art exhibitions and museum programming. Using scientific theories concerning the benefits of sound healing to enhance theta state, neuroplasticity, and heal trauma, Hinkle incorporates sound therapy into unique sound installations, group sound bath sessions, and 1:1 healing sessions for artists, arts administrators, and art lovers. Based upon the premise of retrieval that Hinkle has explored for the past ten years within her multi-disciplinary practice, Hinkle aims to provide shamanic journeying to help museum and gallery visitors to experience sonic transformation and healing that is not only activated within the visual realm but activates extrasensory perception to confront and examine the ghosts of history and our shared present individually and collectively. Hinkle is highly sought after to speak about her work at various universities and institutions nationally and internationally and has created a following via the brand of being a Ghost Lady, working with the ghosts of history and ideas that haunt her. Using these explorations in her visual art practice with much success, participants will be interested in how she approaches a new field of sonics within her practice and how it accentuates this next journey in her established career.

KACH Studio creates unique artwork and performances that chart the intersections of art and healing. KACH Studio features award-winning artworks, signature sound baths, and performances that focus on retrieval. KACH Studio seeks to provide Empowerment for SEEKERS to retrieve through sonics and art. KACH Studio is a BIPOC-artist-as-healer-led initiative established in 2012 that interrogates history and trauma to facilitate healing through visual restorative justice and sonics. KACH Studio creates unique handmade collages, fine art, and signature sound baths that interrogate our relationships to healing within the Historical Present and the ramifications of colonialism. Through the creation of visual restorative justice, the artwork acts as a testimony, and the sound/healing work is the aftercare of the testimony. Each participant, art collector, or client plays a powerful role in addressing the effect of history on us as individuals and within the collective. To own artwork or attend a performance, one is also taking action to heal their own relationship to our collective past. KACH Studio is interested in decolonization and healing from individual and collective trauma, and we work with people who range from being art collectors, students, museum-goers, gallery-goers, creatives, artists, and everyday civilians.

This program is funded in part by Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.