Description
All of our voices
of fear and confusion
our strength and our grace
is not an illusion
Children come to us,
they’ll manifest through us.
and no matter a judgement
The Choice Belongs to Us.
Be not afraid of the unknown.
Bio
USA
Image maker and storyteller
Kia Michelle Benbow, known professionally as Kia LaBeija, is an image maker and storyteller born and raised in the heart of New York City, Hell’s Kitchen. Her multidisciplinary approach to art making includes photography, writing, performance, collage, design, and film. She composes cinematic and theatrical autobiographical works by staging, re-imagining, sometimes documenting in real time, or all of the above. Her performative self-portraits embody memory and dream-like imagery to narrate complex stories at the intersections of womanhood, sexuality, and navigating the world as an Afro-Filipina living with HIV.
She’s presented work at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Tate Modern, The Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of The City of New York, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The International Center for Photography, The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, and the Performa ’19 Biennial.
Kia received a BA from the New School University and is an MFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago — where she received a New Artist Society full merit scholarship. She is a 2019 Creative Capital Awardee alongside her partner Taína Larot.
