In her practice, Keli Safia Maksud considers the spatial politics of the line and threshold as a lens through which to examine the systems that shape the world around us, including architecture, cartography, science, religion, and the natural world. In the beginning reimagines doorways, arches, and passageways as sites of transition and transformation. Anchored by research on the Door of No Return, through which enslaved Africans were forced onto ships bound for the Americas from the fifteenth to nineteenth century, this multimedia installation features a series of interactive archways with motion sensor technologies that trigger and modulate sound. These sonic environments move between legibility and illegibility through the use of narration, vibration, and distortion, evoking states of rupture while reframing colonial lines of division as porous. Maksud’s practice also extends to constellation-like works on carbon paper, which interrogate the ways boundaries have been drawn to separate, negate, or erase. For the artist, the line operates as both a material and conceptual device, holding the tension between “inside” and “outside” while creating possibilities for transgression, entanglement, and movement across seemingly fixed boundaries.

This exhibition is organized by Lindsey Berfond, Associate Curator with Isa López, Administrative Assistant – Curatorial.

Keli Safia Maksud (b. Nairobi, Kenya, 1985) earned her BFA in Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, a Diploma in Art and Curatorial Studies from the New Centre for Research and Practice, and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. Maksud has exhibited her work widely including exhibitions at the Hessel Museum of Art,  Annandale-On-Hudson, NY (2025); CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY (2024); Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2022); Salon 94, New York, NY (2022); and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea (2018); among other venues. Her work has been featured in the Bamako Biennial, Bamako, Mali (2019) and the Biennial of Contemporary Art Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2015). She has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the Bemis Centre for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE (2024); Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME (2022); and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea (2018); among others. Her writing has been published by OCULA Magazine, the Swiss Institute, LEAP Magazine, and A Space Gallery. Maksud lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.