Kern Samuel
Kern Samuel
b. 1990, Mount Hope, Trinidad and Tobago
Lives and works in New Haven, CT
Kern Samuel’s practice centers on painting as a modality to explore material, labor, and the implications thereof. Such tactile engagements as sewing, quilting, dying, folding, and embroidery generate Samuel’s compositions, which often evoke infographic, diagrammatic modes of dissemination. Language, when included in Samuel’s works, is mediated through the grid of the quilt, subverting a didactic reading and lending the verbal a visual dimension. Text and representation are employed sparingly and in conceptual rhyming with material support, alluding to the everyday applications and intimate associations of a given substrate. Such tactics facilitate open readings, circumventing traditional critical models by privileging visuality and tactility over vocabulary. The generosity and expansiveness of this gesture is underscored by Samuel’s evocative titles referring to memory, the unconscious, and spirituality—the territories in which language is inefficient.
EDUCATION
| 2020 | MFA, Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT |
| 2014 | BFA, Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY |
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
| 2024 | Between two (a)isles, Derosia at Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland |
| 2023 | Paining, Derosia, New York, NY |
| 2021 | What Is Under The Sun?, Bodega (Derosia), New York, NY |
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
| 2025 | Condo London, hosted by Soft Opening, London, United Kingdom |
| 2024 | Naked Name, Derosia, New York, NY Hard Ground, MoMA PS1, Queens, NY Five Easy Pieces, Croy Nielsen, Vienna, Austria States of Becoming, curated by Fitsum Shebeshe, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA |
| 2023 | States of Becoming, curated by Fitsum Shebeshe, Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, UMBC, Baltimore, MD |
2022
| Jahresgaben, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany States of Becoming, curated by Fitsum Shebeshe, The Africa Center, New York, NY The Practice of Everyday Life, Derosia, New York, NY Looking Back: The 12th White Columns Annual, Selected by Mary Manning, White Columns, New York, NY the bunker, Santa Monica Mountains, CA |
| 2019 | Process and Practice, Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ |
2018
| Theresa A. Maloney Art Gallery College of Saint Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ Well Hung, Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ |
| 2017 | Caring for Animals ... Benefiting People, curated by Kalena Yiaueki, Jeffrey Stark, New York, NY |
LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS
| 2023 | Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD |
| 2022 | Black Image Center, Los Angeles, CA |
| 2021 | Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD |
| 2020 | The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ |
FELLOWSHIPS AND RESIDENCIES
| 2025 | Arthur Levitt Jr. ’52 Artist-in-Residence, Williams College, Wiliamstown, MA |
| 2024 | Denniston Hill, Glen Wild, NY |
SELECTED PRESS
Kern Samuel: Art Basel STATEMENTS, Monopol Magazine, June, 2024
Kern Samuel: Paining, Louis Block, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2023
Transition Magazine, Indiana University Press, Issue 134, 2023