
Kamau Patton is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work examines history and culture through engagement with archives, documents, stories, and sites. Patton's projects are dialogic and take form as expanded field conversations. Patton received his MFA from Stanford University in 2007 and received a degree in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. His work was shown in 2012 as part of Pacific Standard Time and in 2013 as part of the Machine Project Field guide to LA Architecture. Patton has completed projects in soundscape studies through support provided by the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Mellon Elemental Arts Initiative, and the Tang Teaching Museum. He presented research in 2016 at the ABF house in Stockholm, Sweden, as a part of The Shape of Co- to- Come symposium and exhibition. Patton participated in a series of performances as part of Projects 107: Lone Wolf Recital Corps at the Museum of Modern Art in August 2017. In September 2017, he installed an iteration of his ongoing project, Tel, at the Tang Museum. In 2019, Patton's public art commission with the Bowman Montessori School in Palo Alto, CA, was open to the public. In 2020 Patton was an artist in residence at Coaxial Arts Foundation in Los Angeles. Utilizing recordings from the Sun Ra / El Saturn Collection, Patton created “The Past & Other Dreams”, a double cassette produced by the artist in collaboration with the Creative Audio Archive at ESS. A box set LP of Patton's arrangements of Terry Adkins's Lone Wolf Recital Corps Recitals, Second Mind and Alto Age, will be released in partnership with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in 2021.
Recent. In December 2024 Patton performed SEKHET HETEPU at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was featured in the Studio Museum in Harlem's StudioSound.
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