USA Projects

          Robin Kahn is a visual artist, curator and editor dedicated to making art that helps give voice to the disenfranchised; be they women, under-known artists, or communities that are disempowered.  In "Milking Dada" Andrea Codrington's feature article on Kahn, she heralded her collective projects for "emphasizing collaboration over gallery kudos." (World Art, October 1996).

          In 2009, Kahn spent a month living and cooking with Sahrawi families who live in refugee camps outside Tindouf Algeria as exiles from their land in Western Sahara.  While there, she produced a journal of collages that combine her photos, drawings and texts to create a culinary scrapbook that chronicles traditional recipes of Western Sahara and how they have been adapted to and transformed by the introduction of UN food rations and other non-governmental aid.  The book, Dining in Refugee Camps: The Art of Sahrawi Cooking, (Autonomedia, 2010), is a testament to the fortitude of Sahrawi women who have provided sustenance and maintained their cultural traditions while living under the most adverse and alienating conditions as a dispossessed people for over 35 years.

            Kahn has continued her advocacy for Sahrawi independence as a co-curator of ARTifariti 2011, an annual arts for human rights festival that takes place in the Sahrawi refugee camps and in Tifariti, The Free Territories of Western Sahara.  She has also organized conferences and events such as Art as a Weapon in Western Sahara: New Strategies in the Fight for Independence, (Left Forum, 2011), and Sahara Libre! /Sahara Horra! a video screening of documentaries on Western Sahara that took place in New York, Europe and North Africa, for the International Immigrant Day of action. (Immigrant Movement International, December 18, 2011).

            Kahn's work with women extends into her curatorial projects, editing of artists anthologies and in her studio and installation art.

            She has organized several curatorial projects that address women's issues including An Encyclopedia for the Subversive Homemaker in which she " brings a post-feminist sensibility to her list, with titles suitable for those with a subversive take on anything from fashion and beauty tips to home making and entertaining, (Printed Matter), and a series of installations by women artists in the New York offices of UNIFEM at the United Nations. 

            In 1995 Kahn conceived, organized and edited a publication as public space in collaboration with Creative Time titled Time Capsule: A Concise Encyclopedia by Women Artists. This compendium of art and writing by more than 450 international women artists was presented to UN and NGO delegates attending the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995).  Avital Ronell writes about the book: "The mobilization of this term, time capsule, is not simply an attempt to repeat another Space Age fantasy but it seeks to perform a feminist reinscription of what futurity could mean for the women of this world, now." (Time Capsule, Creative Time)

            Kahn is also author of several books that use humor to explore the historical and cultural construction of women's identities and the various roles that women assume throughout their lives.  These include Everybody Needs Milk,…Even Dada, (1993), Reveries of a Spinster, (1997), Runaway Girls, (1997, with poet and novelist Sarah Blake), and Sexual Lovemaking for Dummies, (2003).  Of her these books, her practice has been described as using "found text and images…to create poetic juxtapositions exploring the subtle ways in which society foists upon women the unattainable ideal of the super-woman: chaste yet sexual, innocent yet responsible, thin yet voluptuous, unfettered yet domesticated."  In The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Art, (2006), one reviewer writes that it is a "…a new book built on the pages of an old one, a smart, witty take on art history collaged over the text and images of a 1950s introduction to fine art for 'club women.' Conceptual artist Robin Kahn has…[produced] a board-book for beginners looking for a fresh and informed entry into contemporary art through the work of a woman artist and curator, and her work reflects changes in both the art world and its audience. A section on recommendations that once directed readers to Mondrian, Jacques-Louis David and Degas now suggests they check out, among others listed by category, 'Mannerist: Lorna Simpson'; 'Screamer: Yoko Ono;' and 'Dildo Strapper: Lynda Benglis.' The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Art is a comic alternative to art history, an art-historically minded piece of art, and a beautifully crafted work in itself."  (all distributed by DAP books).

          In the studio, Robin Kahn is best known for her work employing a broad spectrum of media that includes printmaking, embroidery, quilting, slip-cast, plants and collage to create multi-media installations and environments.  Her works were recently included in Telling Secrets (The Smithsonian's National Museum of Women Artists, Washington, DC) and in the solo exhibition, Everybody Needs a Wife (Mulry Fine Arts, Palm Beach, FL).  Her art has also been exhibited at the Reina Sofia (Madrid), the Carnegie Museum (Pittsburgh), the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Brooklyn Museum, The New Museum of Contemporary Art (NY), Artists Space (NY), White Columns (NY), the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among other venues.

          Robin Kahn was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts, Fellowship Grant and her works are in the permanent collections at The Museum of Women in the Arts, Smithsonian Institute (DC), The Museum of Modern Art (NY), Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Akron Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. 

          Kahn is co-founder of several artists' collectives that provide both local and international communities a public a platform for self-expression.  Agencia de Viaje was formed to produce the Cápsula de Tiempo Córdoba, a physically and conceptually open time capsule for the Universal Exposition Expo'92, (Sevilla Spain); and the collective GRATIS, which promotes the multiplication and dissemination of art and ideas by creating floating copyright-free zones for creative experimentation: Isla del Copyright (1995, Bilbao, Spain), Copiacabana (video, 1995-96, the Guadiana River, from Extremadura, Spain to Beja, Portugal) and Copilandia (2005-06, Sevilla, Spain).