Kayla Hill

Using my camera as a framing device, I investigate human identity in isolation. Focusing on the matriarchs of my family, I explore my projections of their personalities. I sit in my grandma’s and mother’s spaces, wear their clothing, and attempt to embody their being.

A Year Spent Alone allowed me to explore my relationships and surroundings during the pandemic. No longer having the same regimented routine, my life felt less robotic and allowed me to look inward. In A Year Spent Alone, I explored relationships in the canon of my life experience in my work. Emotions, cultures, and environment can all play a part in someone’s true self. As an artist I like to spend time studying my subjects and their systems, resulting in a sense of urgency and intimacy in my work. When examining the different experiences of people in my life, I celebrate the subject. I am essentially interested in creating pieces that make the audience question what life is like for other people. What is identity and what does it mean to truly mean to know someone?

I invite the audience to see what I see. My goal is to create art that makes other people question their identity during times of isolation, perhaps imagining a world outside the immediate one. This project is a mixture of identity, personality, environment and the relationship between three. I wanted to focus on three different people living through the quarantine, Clotelle Hill, Audra Hill and myself. Who are we really? How much of our personality is dependent on others and how much of it comes from ourselves? My family makes me who I am. The deepest unconscious part of the mind is said to be inherited. Looking at things in new ways can result in different ways of thinking. I try to implore that thought process in all the work that I make.

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Kayla Hill

King Carlos, Digital photography, October 2020,3600 x 5408

Being in quarantine has allowed me to rethink the world around me. For my photo tripic I wanted to focus on a world that didn’t demonize certain aspects of blackness. There are certain connotations that come with wearing a do-rag. The “Do rag” was first created in the early 19th century. It was marketed as a cloth band that can keep hair neat. Eventually it was advertised as a way for black men and women to keep hair moisturized and orderly during the night. Preceding forward to the 1990s and 2000s, the (now called) Du-rag became a predominant accessory for black culture. I wanted to create a series that celebrates that black diaspora experience. There are certain aspects of black culture that are associated with the word ‘ghetto’. Ghetto is a derogatory word used in order to put down certain races of people. The negative insinuations around the word ‘ghetto’ are an act of violence towards marginalized communities. I hope this series can change the way we view black culture and the language that we surround it with. Red, white and blue has certain implications also. I want this to also open up conversations around how this country was built on the backs of black people.