About Kevin Jerome Everson

“A wildly prolific filmmaker who investigates the African-American past, class identity, and the practice of artmaking with a visual aesthetic so withholding that Charles Burnett seems florid by comparison, Everson has recently raided obscure archival sources to mine our cultural past for unexpected revelations. The Cleveland Trilogy uses re-enactments and late-60’s news footage to explore the tenure of Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of a major U.S. city; other shorts from this year remix Nixon-age moments from a Virginia TV station—local reports of a pageant queen, a drowned sailor, a female air-traffic controller—to suss out originally unintended profundities and hidden histories.”
—Ed Halter, Village Voice

Over the past 12 years, I have completed three feature films and almost 50 short 16 mm, 35 mm and digital films about the working class culture of Black Americans and other people of African descent. My films focus on conditions, tasks, gestures and materials in these communities. The films consist of the relentlessness of everyday life, as well as its beauty, and have a naturalistic, almost documentary-like texture.

Recently, I have been responding to the performance of peoples of African descent in old film footage as if it were theater. Either by re-enacting the films or just using the footage, I am attempting to create an archive of these performances.

My artwork and films have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; Whitechapel Gallery in London; the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art; Wurttenbergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; the Spaces Gallery in Cleveland; the American Academy of Rome in Italy and in China and Germany.

My films have been shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004 and 2006; Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007; Berlin International Film Festival European Film Market, Berlin, Germany; Cinematexas, Austin, Texas; Ann Arbor Film Festival (five times); LA Film Festival; New York Underground Film Festival (four times including Best Doc 2005 for Spicebush); Oberhausen in Oberhausen, Germany; Festival International Du Documentaire De Marseille, Marseille, France, Mostra Internazionale Del Nuovo Cinema, Pesaro, Italy; Filmfest München, Munich, Germany; the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley, California; International Center of the Arts in London; Black Maria Film Festival (2004 Best Film); Athens International Film Festival (four times including a solo screening); Shorts International in New York (four times); RedCat in Los Angeles, California (solo screening); IndieLisboa 2007, Lisbon, Portugal; Milano Film Festival in Milan, Italy; the Siskel Theater in Chicago (solo screening); the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, Virginia; University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, Princeton University; and South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin Texas (Best Experimental Award for Thermostat). I am the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, two NEH Fellowships, two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, an American Academy Rome Prize, residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell Colony and numerous university fellowships.

Learn more about Everson’s work in Arts & Sciences magazine.