PARIS
25 MARCH – 23 MAY
Invited by Fondation H for a research and creation residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, Priscilla Kennedy is developing the project: Soft Machines, Phantom Limbs, presented at the parisian space of Fondation H from 25 March to 23 May 2026.
PROJECT STATEMENT OF INTENT
Soft Machines, Phantom Limbs is a research-led and materially immersive project that explores the body as a living interface, part limb, part sensor and as a site where both empowering and invasive extensions can take root. The project draws on the duality between technology as empowering prosthetic and disease as an invasive growth, examining how both transform our sensory, emotional and cognitive experience.
Central to this exploration is the figure of the Octopus as an ongoing muse and metaphor as part prosthetic, part intruder. It appears as a symbolic extension of the body opening up the imagination of the body as a shape-shifting entity. It represents the blur between self and other, cradling and invasion, desire and refusal. It becomes a space of both hope and horror. Sometimes soft and nurturing, sometimes invasive and uninvited speaking to the alienation that occurs when the body no longer feels like home.
This project uses the Paris map as both source and structure. The map is broken down, layered and reassembled through a process of combining, interlayering, interweaving and manipulating color schemes. Working with motifs derived from the city’s spatial layout, Kennedy translates streets, routes and boundaries into threaded and knitted patterns that move between textile logic and digital construction.
Through Photoshop, the map as a motif passes through multiple stages of transformation; overlaid, repeated, distorted and reconfigured. The interweaving threads echo the organization of Paris itself: its crossings, hierarchies and hidden systems that shape how space is inhabited and navigated.
Aesthetically and process-wise, this method reflects the internal rhythms of Kennedy's practice. The act of threading and layering parallels the ways memory, place and the body are structured from within. The work shifts the map from a fixed representation into a tactile embodied surface, one that speaks to movement, accumulation and lived experience.
BIOGRAPHY OF PRISCILLA KENNEDY
Born in 1994, Priscilla Kennedy lives and works in Kumasi, Ghana. Adopting a multidisciplinary practice, Kennedy subtly weaves connections between the body, race, sexuality and fictional histories of objects endowed with hybrid forms of life. Her artistic approach engages a variety of media, including painting, tapestry and light, resulting in a sprawling deconstruction of the female body — including her own — conceived as a multiple space for dialogue and exploration.
Kennedy was awarded the Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize in 2022. Her research residency begins in January 2026 at the Cité internationale des arts. Her project will be presented in the form of an exhibition at the Parisian space of Fondation H from 25 March to 23 May 2026.