Kota Khan is a Black Nigerian lesbian multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Khan interrogates their separation from their land and ancestors who resisted multiple forms of violence, specifically spiritual and sexual, used to dominate and discipline colonized bodies. Their sculptures and installations reanimate fractured ontologies and mourn what has been lost to colonial violence and erasure.
Khan draws from Black theory and discourses on libidinal economy, necropolitics, the afterlives of slavery, and ongoing racialized violence to inform their practice. They work with burlap, wax, chicken wire, wood, clay, and steel as they carry the weight of labor and memory across lifetimes. Khan’s work does not seek to resolve trauma or offer catharsis. Rather, it centers Black and Indigenous survival and reclaims the right to spiritual and embodied complexity. Read the full artist statement here.
