KT KENNEDY

KT Kennedy (they/them) is a Black queer non-binary multidisciplinary artist, educator, and youth program director based in Brooklyn, NY committed to resource sharing, art education and community practice as tools for liberation. KT's experience as a resource organizer is reflected in their work as the founder and director of BTGNC (Black Trans & GNC) Resource and Black Education Matters (BEM). BEM has become a notable education resource hub, organization, and network serving over 53,000+ folks and providing hundreds of intersectional, and inclusive materials that affirm and inspire Black youth, diversify curriculum, and educate educators.

KT received their Masters from NYU in art Education and Community Practice from Steinhardt School earning the 2021 AECP Student Excellence Award, and continues to explore intentional community engagement while building accessible community driven resources, workshops, and programs that heal and empower system impacted communities. KT's unique artistic community engagement practice transcends and translates to various communities, gatherings, and teachings, as they are currently at Recess Art, as the Youth & Community Organizer, directing the Assembly youth program as well sitting as a Board advisory member.

In 2023, KT was featured in the New York Times discussing “The Toll of Black Mental Health”, as well as presented with TMI project at Planned Parenthood Conferences discussing gender affirming intersectional reproductive care and bodily autonomy. They are also a regular presenter at Pratt University sharing approaches around inclusive publics for the arts, as well as a current member of ACT UP NYC, and Thank God For Abortion.

KT creates, facilitates, and resources LGBTQIA+ youth QPOC community gatherings and resources such as youth and adult art classes, events, and online conversations with organizations such as “Sweet Circuit” Celebrating Black Queer Poetry, Gender Conference NYC, Gender Inclusive Classrooms, and Black Trans + Gender Non-Conforming Resource (BTGNC). KT has worked with institutions such as the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Nia Centre for the Arts: First Black Arts Centre, The Detroit Historical Society, and multiple other independent Schools and cultural based institutions.

Where representation matters.

KT Kennedy (they/them) is a Black queer non-binary multidisciplinary artist, resourcer, curator, youth and community organizer, and art educator based in BK, New York. Through striking digitally painted portraits, their creative works amplify queer storytelling that celebrates the infinite power and beauty of Black, queer, trans & non-binary folk's, their current movements, communities, and voices. Within this process, KT lets the narrative of each subject dictate and sculpt the style of each piece. It's rare to see genuine representations of queer folks, of our lives, and of the bodies we call home. In KT’s portraits every queer person exists in all the ways that we are, and exactly how we want viewers to see ourselves. All works and portraits are created in collaboration with their subjects and real experiences. KT also explores the digital medium's ethics, role, capacity, and what it means to utilize digital tools as system impacted artists throughout our movements. To date, KT’s practice includes works of animation, digital drawings + portraiture, art education, illustration, art education, community practice and mixed media works.

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Cultivating the Collective:

KT Kennedy along with two close friends founded Ujima in 2017 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, existing to expose, support, and celebrate local Black artists of all mediums (visual, performing, conceptual etc.). Creating a platform for Black expression as a tool Black liberation, we are Ujima. The following photos are shot by UJIMA photographers: Greg Goss, Christian Boyd, and Cyrus T. Ujima and directed by KT Kennedy, Liz Kennedy, and Christian Boyd, presents RISE: a Solange inspired Black empowerment shoot. Note: Ujima has intentionally capitalized the B in Black/Blackness etc. It is not neither grammatically necessary or unnecessary, but it affirms the strength with which we use it.

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“I Tried To Save Myself”

KT, Recess Assembly youth fellows, and program educators present a selection of work confronting ideas of identity, the body, and radical beauty, tied together by the thread of fraternity and community. I Tried to Save Myself is a space built by and for community engagement–centering nourishment, hope, reckoning, and reconciliation. The exhibit approaches diverse identities, histories, and methodologies with care, representing a variety of mediums including video, photography, printmaking, digital painting, and mixed media work. Through these works, the artists in I Tried to Save Myself contend that only community care can save us in a world where liberation must be attained through human connection and collective action.

During the course of the exhibition, 3 workshops were held in The Jerry H. Labowitz Theater for the Performing Arts to accompany I Tried to Save Myself. Find more information on the workshops page. 

Where the art of story-telling meets transformative justice.

KT Kennedy was a part of TMI Project’s first-ever Black Trans Stories Matter live virtual true storytelling performance. The performance was a culmination of a Black trans-led 10-session true storytelling workshop series for Black TGNC people. They gathered, wrote, shared stories, and received support in a space where they didn’t have to justify, explain or defend their truth. The performance is now accessible to an all-inclusive audience, paired with a viewing and discussion guide to inspire deep introspection, a willingness to transform oneself and take bold action to end systemic racism and transphobia.

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