Artist Statement

I am interested in visceral multidisciplinary experiences that assist in building bridges of empathy and advocacy. Through my collaborative performance projects, I have engaged audiences with the use of breathwork, movement improvisation, and cycles that force the viewers to engage in asking and answering new questions. Through my solo photo and video work, I express grief through clown, using the thin veil of absurdity to grant myself vulnerability and play in the face of trauma. I am a firm believer in practice; no process is ever truly “finished”, it only evolves my practice and allows me to learn and grow as an artist.

My work focuses on encouraging tension to make the line between performer and audience malleable. I enjoy evoking the spirit of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty to hold audiences in distressing cycles that repeat and intensify to climax, and allowing absurdity and reverence to coexist with care.

Bio

Kenwyn Samuel (they/them) is a queer disabled multidisciplinary performance artist and cosmetologist striving to build bridges of empathy and advocacy. They have been a consortium member and mentor for the Get What You Need Residency since 2020, and was the recipient of a 2020 Art & Change Grant from the Leeway Foundation and 2021 Visibility Impact Fund Grant for their project VISIBILITYtalks, which collaborated with artists on the Disability Spectrum to create artistic documentaries highlighting their work and lives in a format that gives them full agency over the final product. As a creator, artist, and actor, they have worked/presented work at their hair salon in New Jersey, pilot+projects gallery/Free Fringe Philly, Rowan University, thINKingDANCE.net, the Shoebox Festival, the Ritz Theater, and Jersey Fringe.