Cynthia Hawkins in conversation with Zoé Whitley

Join Cynthia Hawkins in conversation with Zoé Whitley on the occasion of Hawkins' exhibition Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D: Chapter 4 at Hollybush Gardens.

Cynthia Hawkins (b. 1950, Queens, New York) lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York. She received a BA in painting from the Queens College, City University of New York, an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, and a doctorate in American Studies from the University of Buffalo, SUNY with a dissertation titled, ‘African American Agency and the Art Object, 1868-1917’. Informed by her work as a historian and curator, her art practice wrestles with the history of abstraction across the 20th century, embracing formal reinvention as a fundamental task of painting. Collapsing distinct strategies of painting into a single composition, she builds up layers as distinct planar realities, which are then revealed through breaks or transparencies in their over-painting.

Hawkins participated in the burgeoning black-owned gallery scene of New York’s 1970s and 80s. Solo exhibitions include Cynthia Hawkins, Just Above Midtown, New York (1981); Cynthia Hawkins, Frances Wolfson Art Center, Miami (1986); New Works: The Currency of Meaning, Cinque Gallery, New York (1989); Selected Works: 1990–1996, Queens College Art Center (1997); Clusters: Stellar and Earthly, Buffalo Science Museum, Buffalo (2009); Natural Things, 1996–99, STARS, Los Angeles (2022); Gwynfor’s Soup, or the Proximity of Matter, Ortuzar Projects, New York (2023); Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D, STARS, Los Angeles (2024) and Wander/Wonder: Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D, kauffmann repetto, Milan (2024); Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D, Paula Cooper, New York and Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D: Chapter 4, Hollybush Gardens, London (2025). Hawkins is included in the 36th Bienal de São Paulo Not All Travellers Walk Roads.

Until recently, Hawkins was the gallery director and curator at the Bertha V.B. Lederer Gallery, SUNY Geneseo, New York. She was included in the survey exhibition Just Above Midtown: 1974 to Present at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022). Her work is also in numerous public collections including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Kenkeleba Gallery, New York; The La Grange Art Museum, La Grange, Georgia; and the Department of State, Washington, D.C. She has received many awards such as the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting (2023); the Black Metropolis Research Consortium Fellowship (2009); The Herbert and Irene Wheeler Grant (1995); and the Brooklyn Museum Art School Scholarship (1972).

Zoé Whitley is an American-born curator and writer based in London. Current projects include assemblage artist Betye Saar’s official biography. Previously, she was director of Chisenhale Gallery (2020-2025). As Senior Curator at the Hayward Gallery (2019), a curator at Tate Modern (2014-2019), Tate Britain (2013-2015) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (2003-2013), she has organised acclaimed exhibitions, major site-specific commissions and related publications. She was selected to curate the British pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, featuring new work by Cathy Wilkes.

Whitley's research interests also include expanding children's access to art, as a result authoring children's books Meet the Artist: Frank Bowling, Meet the Artist: Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and working with Sharna Jackson on the award-winning Thames & Hudson book Black Artists Shaping the World. She is a trustee of the Teiger Foundation and Sir John Soane’s Museum.