2026 Treat a Stranger Grant Recipient

Keioui Keijaun Thomas is a New York-based artist. She creates live performance and multimedia installations that address the multifaceted realms of Black identity formation through a captivating fusion of voice, video installation and sculpture. Thomas constructs immersive environments that blur the boundaries between the body, its surroundings, and its social meanings. Her work insists on the transformative power of Black life, reclaiming space, time, and nature as sites of possibility, resilience, and becoming. Thomas’s work emerges from an iterative process informed by her writing and performance; her practice is linguistic as much as it is bodily. Utilizing an array of materials such as hair, tape, water and latex to create tableaus that are intricately intertwined with her own body. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA with Honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Thomas has presented work globally.

Photo by T. Roseschlein