SUPERMAJOR, Matt Kenyon’s piece on the politics of oil, has taken on an unexpected life of its own.
Newly hired Associate Professor in Digital + Media Matt Kenyon is deeply interested in how art “lives as a story and as an object – in its multiple lives.” Over the years, he has embarked on a range of projects that take him beyond the studio and into the heart of complex political and economic systems – whether he’s turning his body into a barcode scanner to disrupt Nielsen market analysis (in Consumer Index) or collaborating with Syrian journalist Honey Al-Sayed and translator Laura Marris on an upcoming sculptural installation that explores the many ways translation affects the current refugee crisis.
Kenyon, a new media sculptor who earned his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University and most recently taught at the University of Michigan, looks forward to the shift in scope afforded by RISD’s art-centered approach. “At large state schools, I’ve had opportunities to advocate for art within a larger research direction and align it with science,” he says. “But here it’s the inverse: Art is the norm, it’s the core. It’s clear that students are serious about becoming artists. This is a really special place that attracts people who are super-passionate about their work. And to me, that’s exciting.”
Kenyon has exhibited both nationally and internationally and has work in a number of permanent collections, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He conducts his research under the umbrella of SWAMP (Studies of Work Atmosphere and Mass Production), a practice focused on “critical themes addressing the effects of global corporate operations, mass media and communication, military-industrial complexes, and general meditations on the liminal area between life and artificial life.”