Basil Kincaid

Lives and works in St. Louis, MO

Artist statement

My practice spans quilting, drawing, embroidery, installation, and performance, with textiles as the through line. I work primarily with repurposed materials, and my work is rooted in the legacy of Black quilt-making while pushing that language into new, multidimensional forms. I resist rigid categorization. My work moves between abstract and narrative modes, exploring perception, the body, and the expansiveness of experience across spiritual, emotional, and digital registers. I make work across continents, between studios in St. Louis and Ghana, charting a transatlantic geography of self-exploration, resilience, and cultural continuity. Artists like Anni Albers and Alma Thomas are touchstones, as are natural phenomena, meteorology, and cosmic systems. The work tries to hold the terrestrial and the transcendent at once.

Artwork

• The River, 2022. Quilt
• Dancing the Wind Walk, 2023. Airplane wrapped in patchwork quilt made from discarded, recycled material gathered in Ghana and St. Louis
• Melanin Activation, 2020. The Artist’s clothing, Ghanaian wax block fabric, Nigerian lace, cotton, embroidery floss, and sequins
• The Courtship of Lightnin Bugs, 2023. Kente cloth, Ghanaian wax block fabric, cotton, wool, fur, polyester, embroidery floss, tweed, yarn, velvet, curtains
• The Release, 2019. Performance
• Installation view, Inward Cartography: Self of Selves, Library Street Collective, Detroit, 2025. Embroidery on canvas