Arnold J. Kemp: Three Performances

Join Tufts University Art Galleries for an evening of performance with Arnold J. Kemp, featuring three works, February 14, In Arms, and The Otherists (all 2024). Drawing upon the experimental writing traditions of New Narrative and the spontaneity of Poet’s Theater, Kemp’s plays evoke immediacy and an artistic encounter with life.

Arnold J. Kemp (American, b. 1968, Boston) lives and works in Chicago. Recent exhibitions of the artist’s work include To Whom Keeps A Record (2024) at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; Arnold J. Kemp: Three Plays (2024), Human Resources, Los Angeles; Stage (2023), Martos Gallery, New York; Less Like an Object and More Like the Weather (2022), The Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago; False Hydras (2021), JOAN, Los Angeles; and I Could Survive, I Would Survive, I Should Survive (2021), Manetti Shrem Art Museum, the University of California, Davis. Kemp’s works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Portland Art Museum, the Schneider Museum of Art, the Tacoma Art Museum, The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, and the Hammer Art Museum. He has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in 2021. In addition, Kemp’s writing has appeared in Artforum, October, Art Journal, Texte zur Kunst, Callaloo, Agni Review, MIRAGE #4 Period(ical), River Styx, Nocturnes, Tripwire, Three Rivers Poetry Journal, and in From Our Hearts to Yours: New Narrative as Contemporary Practice.

Professor Kemp teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2024, he was the Holt Visiting Artist in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University. He also holds an MFA (2025) from Stanford University.

Image: Arnold J. Kemp, “Untitled” (Janus), 2024. Private Collection, New York.