Steffani Jemison

The Kitchen presents Steffani Jemison: Cant (December 4, 2026–February 6, 2027). This solo presentation marks the artist’s debut at The Kitchen and her first institutional solo exhibition in New York City in nearly ten years. A writer and artist interested in the worlds created by language, Jemison considers how meaning emerges through sound, gesture, and forms of communication that resist easy interpretation. Taking its title from a linguistic term that simultaneously evokes on the one hand refusal ("can't"), and on the other strategic jargon and an off-kilter surface (“cant”), Jemison's exhibition considers how antagonism and invitation, hostility and comfort, are entangled. Through sound, sculpture, photography, and performance, Jemison’s exhibition holds the tensions between restriction and freedom asking how the structures that govern movement might be reimagined.

Central to the exhibition is the sonic installation Untitled (Augur) (2026), which repurposes a commercial bird-repelling device originally designed to broadcast the distress calls of birds and their predators. The word "augur" evokes the ancient Roman spiritual practice of interpreting the movements of birds to predict the future. Interwoven with this sound is a live audio feed from a microphone positioned on the grounds of Westbeth Artists Housing complex, The Kitchen’s temporary home, bringing the sonic life of New York City into the gallery through an FM radio network. Through these sonic manipulations, Jemison transforms the device’s deterrent signal to produce a communal listening experience inviting attendees to consider everyday encounters with technologies of violence.

A new series of sculptures Untitled (Same Time) (2026)—Same Time is a recurring title in Jemison’s works used to collapse the past and present into each other—extends the exhibition’s investigation of everyday, environmental objects by transforming ordinary buckets into portals integrating tumbled stones, coins, and other materials. Similarly, a sculpture made from bird-prevention spikes situates the familiar instrument of hostile architecture in clusters throughout the exhibition space, suggesting alternative relationships between infrastructures of violence and the natural world. Jemison will also debut a set of lenticular prints, also Untitled (Same Time) (2026), blending photographs of New York City’s everyday textures with holographic material sold to scare birds. These shifting images that change with the viewer’s physical position emphasize movement, perception, and the instability of what can be seen. Rather than offering a single resolution, Jemison produces space to consider other ways of listening, moving, and coexisting within the city.

Cant features an experimental series of live performances that build upon the artist’s ongoing theatrical work, Flight Theater (2025–present). Co-commissioned by The Kitchen and Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster—where Jemison presented her first solo exhibition in Germany earlier this year—the three performances will take place on January 21, 28, and February 4, 2027, at 7 pm. Created and presented in collaboration with writer Quincy Flowers, Flight Theater will feature repeat and new collaborators to be announced soon, with Elliot Reed as dramaturg. Unfolding in unique vignettes incorporating language and movement games alongside new and recomposed material, the work extends Jemison’s investigation of flight, language, and embodied communication into live performance to probe questions of movement and shared space between performers and the audience.

Throughout January and February, The Kitchen will host a series of community programs in conjunction with the exhibition. Families are invited to join Teaching Artist Rosed Serrano on the third Saturday of each month for special early access hours and an artmaking workshop (11 am to 1 pm). Additionally, The Kitchen will partner with Ditmas Park Birdwatcher’s Club to host guided birding walks through Hudson River Park, concluding with a gallery tour and warm drinks (Saturdays, January 30 and February 6 from 11 am to 1 pm). On February 4, The Kitchen and Greene Naftali Gallery will co-host a book launch celebrating Jemison's newly released title, Bound, following Jemison’s final performance of Flight Theater.

Steffani Jemison: Cant is organized by Robyn Farrell, Senior Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs with Angelique Rosales Salgado, Assistant Curator, Fernanda Escalera Zambrano, Operations Manager, and Anju Lukose-Scott, 2026-2027 Curatorial Fellow. Production by David Riley, Senior Production Manager & Exhibitions Manager, and Tassja Walker, Production Supervisor.