In one of his earliest performative gestures, Kendell Geers changed his own date of birth to May 1968, giving birth to himself as a shape-shifting Afropean artist. He has built a career as an inside outsider, refusing to compromise — one of the most resilient artists working today. He describes his own practice as AniMytikAKtivist: a weave of syncretic animism, alchemical mysticism, activist urgency, and a sharp, dark humor.

He’s been compared to the Joker — moving through the art system like a shadow, tongue in cheek, the punchline always landing where you least expect it. He wears provocation like a conviction rather than a costume, unsettling rooms precisely by refusing to explain the joke. Where institutions want order, he offers controlled chaos — not to burn the system down, but to show everyone watching just how fragile its order always was.

New York Times critic Holland Cotter has praised Geers’s ability to deliver “the kind of epiphany political art is supposed to,” calling his work art with real, unexpected impact.

Geers has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and Documenta, with work held in public collections including the Guggenheim, the Vanhaerents Collection, the Uhoda Collection, BPS22, SMAK, Middelheim, and the Pompidou. He also donated a work to Mukha that is currently unaccounted for.