Basil Kincaid

Basil Kincaid (born in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses quilting, collage, photography, installation and performance. He studied drawing and painting at Colorado College, graduating in 2010.

In 2014, a residency with the organisation Arts Connect International took him to Accra, Ghana. It was there that Basil Kincaid made his first quilts. As a child, he had watched his grandmother and her friends sew on his grandparents' farm in Arkansas.

Through richly composed textile works made from salvaged and recycled materials, Kincaid explores memory, ancestry, spirituality and Black identity. His quilts bring together fabrics given by family and friends, hand-woven kente and textiles found in St. Louis as well as in Ghana.

Today he lives and works between the United States and Ghana. He has exhibited internationally at institutions and galleries including Hauser & Wirth, the Rubell Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Venus Over Manhattan. In 2019, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis hosted his performance "The Release". In 2022, Venus Over Manhattan devoted the exhibition "River, Frog and Crescent Moon" to him in New York.

His work entered the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2021 with the quilt "Riverside Revival: Lift Every Voice and Sing", which tells how his paternal grandparents met at a tent revival service. The same year, Basil Kincaid received a United States Artists fellowship.