An Alphabet of Unfolding
Miatta Kawinzi: An Alphabet of Unfolding
Curated by Rachel Adams, Chief Curator + Director of Programs
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE
June 5 - September 13, 2026
Miatta Kawinzi: An Alphabet of Unfolding is a multi-gallery exhibition that explores hybridity, memory, and sustenance through mixed-media works, sculpture, installation, sound, video, and text. Kawinzi is a Kenyan-Liberian-American artist, writer, and educator whose work explores hybridity within the African Diaspora and the re-imagining of self, identity, place, and culture. Her experimental and multidisciplinary practice searches for spaces of possibility and connection within inner and outer landscapes through a broad range of media, including still and moving images, writing, performance, multimedia installation, and site-responsive sculpture.
Shaped by long-term research and creative exploration, An Alphabet of Unfolding grew out of Kawinzi’s own questions around what it means to find and forge a sense of home and belonging across multiple spaces in a shifting world. Informed by personal and familial experiences of movement and migration, and with a particular focus on her Liberian heritage, the multi-dimensional works in this exhibition reflect the multiplicities and hybridities that are entangled with diasporic identities. With a fusion of new and recent work, An Alphabet of Unfolding is an expansive, multisensory exploration of cultural lineage, ecological interconnection, and the embodied practices through which individuals and communities persist and adapt.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by the Douglas County Visitor Improvement Fund, Humanities Nebraska, Nebraska Arts Council/Nebraska Cultural Endowment, and the Sherwood Foundation.
The artist’s work in this exhibition is supported in part by Creative Capital and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. The development of this work has also been supported by the artist’s participation in Àsìkò Art School (Cairo, 2025) and The Short Century Intensive Research Fellowship (Guest Artists Space Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation).
Exhibition Walk-through Video
Miatta Kawinzi in Conversation with Rachel Adams
Gallery Guide - English
Guía de la galería - Español
More info : Bemis Center