How can we engage a futurist imagination of Black subjectivity when normative models of perception are rooted in opposition to it?
On what plane, then, can we access a future-oriented imagination of Black be(ing)? Can this plane be brought into view, and if so, at what cost?
Kimberly Heard (b. 1991) is an anti-disciplinary artist investigating the instability and mutability of perception. For Heard, who works across painting, sculpture, and installation, opacity, texture, and reflectivity are devices for exploring the phenomenology of perception.
Referencing both embodied memories and photographic images from a private collection gifted to her in 2020, Kimberly’s As Symbol & Concept series began with an interest in reconstructing archival images of quotidian life on canvas. Merging an assortment of drawing materials (charcoal, conte, oil pastel, and chalk) with oil-based mediums, domestic scenes gradually assert themselves to the eye, negotiating what is revealed and concealed as the viewer’s proximity to the work shifts.
Her recent series, Dehisence, expands her interest in the quotidian and mundane, deriving imagery from a more diaristic place. Where As Symbol & Concept amplifies what surrounds the canvas, these works amplify the tension within a composition. Color fields of umber, sienna, and chromatic blacks are painted wet-on-wet, and figures often emergent, entangled, and immersed in the details of domestic architecture and gestural, monochromatic surroundings. As the eye traverses the illusionistic space, tenderly rendered hands and faces steady the viewing experience.
With an acute understanding of the canonical power of images, Heard turns to abstraction as a fugitive vehicle in her work. From painting to sculpture, weaving to printmaking, fragmented remnants accrue—encoded with a tactility that seeks to stall or trap the vestibular transition of concept to material indexical form.
Kimberly is currently working in New Haven, CT to complete her MFA in Painting at Yale School of Art. She is the 2025 recipient of the Robert Schoelkopf Memorial Travel Fellowship. Her work has exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, NAAMCC, Bread & Salt Gallery, Gallery QI. She enjoys quietude, home-cooked meals, zinemaking, and the sound that leaves make when they encounter rain.
Email:
khrdstudio@gmail.com
