Temple University

Kedrick McKenzie’s work is an inquiry of what lies underneath layers and layers of frontiers. Growing up on the West Coast, where, as Joan Didion puts it, “boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension,” McKenzie has said his work originates from the act of questioning his assumptions about the place he calls home and the stories told about it. By combining quotidian craft practices with ephemeral materials, he challenges the slippery and subjective ways that histories are recorded and recounted. His practice revolves around the uneasy combination of the care and individuality imbedded in craft traditions with the extractive practices and consumer culture that built his homeland. The result is a research-led practice that suggests new stories about place, identity, and history.