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Basil Kincaid | International Contemporary Artist

@basilkincaid

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A creative breakthrough years ago helped weave the way toward a newly opened, fitness-oriented pocket park on Chippewa Street in south St. Louis.

Multidisciplinary artist @basilkincaid was focused on painting and collage about 10 years ago, when he branched into fiber arts — particularly large-scale quilts.

Kincaid, a St. Louis native who now splits his time between the city and the Greater Accra Region in Ghana, had been experiencing depression about a decade ago and felt generally unhealthy. He was excited by his new artistic direction — which sometimes involved hunting around the city for spare fabric and assembling projects on tall scaffolding — but didn’t feel physically fit enough to stitch all the ideas in his head into reality.

He started a calisthenics training program.

“The quilt-making and the calisthenics all sort of folded in, hand in hand,” Kincaid said. “It was having physical effects too, but I started noticing how the exercise was doing way more for my mind and my spirit. I was amazed at how I was sleeping better. I was not getting as depressed. I was having clearer thoughts and ideas.

“I wanted to improve my mental health and ended up getting jacked on accident,” he added with a laugh.

Kincaid and his collaborators are now offering a freely accessible way to pursue a similar path.

A community cookout on Saturday marked the opening of a small calisthenics park in an underused grassy lot on along the border of Gravois Park and Dutchtown.

Kincaid worked with the Melvin Theater Community Center and Texas-based playground equipment designer KOMPAN to design the pocket park, nestled into a corner of the lot adjacent to the Melvin.

The oval-shaped space includes shock-absorbant flooring, monkey bars and other bars fixed in place, on which visitors can run through assisted pushups, dips and other exercises. Small signs suggest ways to use the equipment, with QR codes linking to more extensive directions.

Tap the link in our bio for the full story.

✍️ & 📸: Jeremy D. Goodwin by @basilkincaid

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a month ago

With Flower Song: Through Dappled Shade, Dancing on Our Faces, artist @basilkincaid transforms quilting into a cosmic story of the American Dream.

Drawing from seven generations of family quilting, Basil works with fabrics collected from Ghana, Nigeria, and St. Louis, using pieces recycled and reimagined into bold patterns that celebrate resilience, family, and creativity.

Across three quilted panels, human and animal forms come together in celebration, play, and learning, exploring the essential elements that help dreams take root: innovation, entrepreneurship, health, and education. Figures with star-shaped eyes symbolize aspiration, hope, and limitless potential.

✨ Experience Kincaid’s vision of the Dream in our Hall of Generations.

#AmericanDreamExperience #MoreThanAMuseum #DCArt View of the Hall of Generations at the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, featuring three colorful textile artwork by Basil Kincaid between marble columns and the golden Tree of Generations sculpture in the foreground. taken in Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream by @basilkincaid

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“Spider Guardian & Shadow Snake” 2023 now on view @rubellmuseumdc in my solo presentation “Spirit in the Gift”

I’m amped for this work to come out of storage and breathe life. This is one of my favorite works of art that I’ve made. It’s one of my masterpieces. The embroidery is ~12x 16 feet. Definitely my most ambitious embroidery work.

Embroidery allows my drawing to take center stage. Reinvigorating my childhood self. Validating all the hidden years of drawing monsters, demons, and guardians.

You really have to see the work in person to begin to comprehend it.

As a kid I always loved spiders. I had a pet spider (it wasn’t allowed in the house) but I would go visit “Ralph” in this little alcove by the creek behind our house. I’ve also been long fascinated by snakes, Symbolically & biologically.

Conceptually I’m dealing with the notion of monstrosity. How we are coached into looking at certain individuals as monsters, dehumanizing them, making it easier for them to be erased in one manner or another.

In some contexts I am viewed monstrously or as a threat and in other contexts I’m viewed as a light and maybe even a powerful beacon of hope and possibility.

I’m focused on perception. Creating ways for things, sites, materials, people, to be viewed within a multiplicity of possibilities, potentials, and paradigms.

When you observe the work you see a spider person, 4 legs and 4 arms, 8 eyes, but the way I drew it, it looks like a conjoined twins joined at the back, creating a warrior that can see and fight from all angles. As you look even closer you’ll notice that each of the 8 eyes has its own visual jutsu or visual prowess. I’ll go into deeper detail in my story. This again speaks to perception, my guardian can see into many realms and defeat any manner of challenge or foe, physical, spiritual, or mental. The shadow of the entity is a snake. The snake is as dynamic as the being that is reflected. I like the notion that our shadows have their own lives and own world. The snake relates to the Jungian concept of the shadow self. Reconciling my relationship with the parts of myself and subconscious deemed undesirable making them strengths. #basilkincaid taken in Rubell Museum DC by @basilkincaid

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a year ago

💪🎨 What happens when art, exercise, and community come together?⁠
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St. Louis artist Basil Kincaid has helped transform a grassy lot in Gravois Park into a free, artist-designed calisthenics park where neighbors can work out, connect, and spend time outdoors.⁠
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The new pocket park, located next to the Melvin Theatre Community Center at Chippewa and Pennsylvania, grew out of Kincaid’s own love of exercise and his desire to bring the kind of communal outdoor fitness spaces he’d seen in other cities to South St. Louis.⁠
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✍️ Sarah Fenske⁠
📸 @kevinaroberts⁠
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Head to the link in bio to see the new space and learn how Kincaid, the Melvin Theatre Community Center, and the Regional Arts Commission brought it to life. by @basilkincaid

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20 days ago

✨🩵🪄💙🐈‍⬛🩵 ✨ by @basilkincaid

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a month ago

A realm of magic and mysteries by @basilkincaid

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Thank you to everyone who came out on Saturday in support of the unveiling of Basil Kincaid’s (@basilkincaid) new calisthenics pocket park! St. Louis Public Radio (@stlpublicradio) was there, with a story that aired today and is now online.

The park is the culmination of a decade-long practice: calisthenics and fiber arts developing in parallel, each strengthening the other. It is free and open to the public 24/7, located at the corner of Chippewa and Pennsylvania, developed in collaboration with the Melvin Theater Community Center and KOMPAN.

“The quilt-making and the calisthenics all sort of folded in, hand in hand,” Kincaid said. “It was having physical effects too, but I started noticing how the exercise was doing way more for my mind and my spirit.”

You can hear more about the event on stlpr.org. And join us for a workout the next time you’re in the area! taken in St. Louis, Missouri by @basilkincaid

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Day one at Season Fair (@season.contemporary) is a wrap.⁠
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Thank you to everyone who joined us at the Shepherd today. We’ll be back tomorrow in Booth G3, presenting work by Mario Moore (@mariomooreart) and Basil Kincaid (@basilkincaid).⁠
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See you tomorrow. ✨️ taken in Library Street Collective by @basilkincaid

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If you’re in Detroit, join us this weekend in viewing Library Street Collective’s (@librarystreetcollective) two-person booth at Season Art Fair (@season.contemporary), featuring new works by Basil Kincaid (@basilkincaid) and Mario Moore (@mariomooreart).

Kincaid presents new glitched embroideries alongside works on paper first shown in Positive Obsession, the Artist’s 2025 solo exhibition at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (@nermanmuseum). Moore’s new paintings move through home, safety, and self-possession, tracing a path between history, knowledge, and rest. Together, their bodies of work open unexpected dialogues between two contemporaries. taken in Detroit, Michigan by @basilkincaid

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a month ago

At the corner of Chippewa and Pennsylvania @melvinstl Come celebrate the unveiling of “Slow Magic Park” 🪄

This calisthenics park and play space is a work of art that is inspired by my personal journey with physical therapy and how developing and active relationships with my body, has been transformative in my art practice and life as a whole.

At the block party @juicemasters will be there with juice and smoothies on deck.

@prospect_out_hrr will be DJing the function we’ve collaborated on art projects and community projects together for over the last decade.

@melvinstl is providing food in collaboration with @thefattenedcaf

I think there’s some face painting, beading, and other activities for the kids or the kids at heart.

The park is a reminder to prioritize care for yourself and the environment around you. It’s a seed planted to remind us that when you want to see something in your neighborhood or city we all have the agency to make impact no matter the scale. It could be as small as picking up trash you see. Or building a Vision that you imagine. We don’t have to wait on organizations. We can create the changes that we want to see in our environments.

I want to thank the @stlouisarts for allowing me to use the artist grant to support my design process in building this project.

I also want to thank everyone that supports my art practice in all of the ways. The people collecting my original art and prints make my social sculptural work like this possible. If you’re in St. Louis come on out and vibe with us. It’ll be a blast 💥 by @basilkincaid

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We are excited to present new work by Basil Kincaid (@basilkincaid) at Season Fair this week, September 11–13, at the Shepherd. Find us in Booth G3.⁠
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Kincaid works across quilting, collage, photography, installation, and performance, often incorporating traditional textiles and found materials into works that reconsider cultural traditions and inherited ideas.⁠
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Artwork details: The Heat at Bear Creek, 2026. Embroidery on hand-woven cotton fiber, embroidered hand-woven Ashanti Kente. 29 1/2 x 36 in. taken in The Shepherd by @basilkincaid

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A common recurring theme in my work explores the organization of your spirit, intent, and actions to craft new realities. The capacity of our being and energy to create fascinates me.

On an individual level a person can make art, games, through action and intent they can create a new body or mind for themselves. I’ve personally experienced all of these.

In certain pairs new life can be created, in groups we can create villages with unique belief systems.

As a whole we create contracts for society to abide by.

And, it stands to reason that with imagination, when reality doesn’t suit us we can create new realities and relationships to each other and reality along with new contracts.

I look at my own life, how I was at various stages, and how I am now. Harnessing that creative potential, is a powerful force. And we all do it.

My dad would say “consciously or subconsciously you’re actively choosing your reality” as a kid that would go over my head. He’d go on to say “a lot of people give up their power to an assumption of weakness or powerlessness, or routine, you get in a way of being an it’s hard to get out. But you always have a choice, and it starts with choosing your thoughts.”

A lot of my work focuses on breaking down these memories and oral traditions within my family. I’ve seen the malleability of reality first hand. The key to me is to believe. And when enough of us act on certain beliefs reality can’t help but shift. by @basilkincaid

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