Kayla Hall

Kayla is a mixed media printmaker and book artist from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Louisiana State University in 2023. She is currently a MFA candidate at the University of Georgia interested in curating interactive, immersive print utilizing trans-medium storytelling. Her practice investigates the history of Black resistance towards liberation and restoration.

Research Detail

Ubuntu – “I am because we are, we are, therefore I am.”

Within African cosmology, a person is not a person him/her/their-self but is cultivated by a community.Through research and community-based materials, I explore themes of self-hood, collectivity, voyage, remembrance, and visibility. Often, I assume the role of a visual griot by interweaving the stories, emotions, and lives of those before me to share with those beyond, as history and human experience are rooted across time and knowledge. How does one navigate this journey of belonging and becoming?

By looking to the past to construct a future of black ownership (Sankofa), I can unearth the traumatic and unresolved history of the black orphanage to envision the creation of alternative spaces, worlds, thoughts, language, and narratives rooted in blackness. In doing so, art education becomes positioned as a healing tool. I view printmaking as a ritual process that produces a tangible material and re-interpretation of black heritage, enabling consciousness, and decolonizing our imagination. The audience is called to interact with the print igniting internal and external dialogue across time and space. The work is then transformed as a voyage of transcendence and rediscovery, empowering viewers to become unorthodox explorers, questioning their own identities, environments, agency, and belonging.