Kai Barrow

kai barrow (b. 1959, Chicago) is a visual and performance artist based in New Orleans. Barrow is interested in the praxis of radical imagination. Together with her muses: Absurdity, Sarcasm, Myth and Merriment, she experiments with abolition as an artistic vernacular. Her sprawling paintings, environmental installations, found object assemblages, and social practice performances are created in traditional and non-traditional spaces to transgress ideological, geographic, and carceral borders. The work performs queer, Black feminist theory as an aesthetic genre.

Barrow is a member of the Antenna Collective and a founding member of Gallery of the Streets, a national network of artists, activists, and scholars who work at the nexus of art, education, social change and community engagement. She has received residencies, fellowships, and awards from Prospect New Orleans, Project Row Houses; the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center; the Joan Mitchell Center; A Studio in the Woods; Alternate Roots; the Kindle Project, and the Weavers Project.

A social-movement organizer for over forty years, barrow has worked with numerous grassroots organizations including SLAM!, FIERCE!, Critical Resistance, UBUNTU, and Southerners on New Ground. She is currently the Program Director with the Weavers Project, which provides fellowships and residencies for Black Feminist artists.

sometimes I sound like gravel.

Grantee Information

Website(s): https://www.kailbarrow.com/
http://galleryofthestreets.org/
Year(s) Awarded: 2020, 2022