KMM Projects

KMM Projects is a gallery and project space based in East Providence, RI founded by curator and educator Kate McNamara. KMM Projects focuses on contemporary art with a commitment to contextualizing pioneering and emerging artists.

Interveiw with KMM Projects

Hi Kate! Can you tell us a bit about your background and your interest in art? Any early memories that sparked this interest?

I have worked as a curator and educator for the last 15+ years. When I was an undergrad in college, I thought I was going to be a painter, but as I became more engaged in art history and critical theory classes, I realized that there was a real fissure in what I was thinking about and what I was able to make. I remember one of those “ah ha!” moments came when I was on a class trip to NYC and met with the then curator of Artists Space, an alternative art space founded by artists in the 70s, who spoke about her role as a curator specifically within an alternative art space and I was hooked! That is when the role of curator became a clear shift - I loved working with artists and in the role of curator, I was able to bring focus to my ideas and expand on them with artists and artworks. 

You have a lot of experience with many types of curatorial projects of all shapes and sizes. How did you get involved in curating initially? What keeps you interested?

It is true, I have worked in museums, university and college art galleries,I have run project spaces, and more recently I have also been working with a small public arts organization. My curatorial trajectory really continued throughout my education, where I pursued a Masters in Curatorial Studies at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. My love of alternative art spaces has always been a guiding force in my professional life and my first job out of grad school was at MoMA PS1. I was lucky to work with the founder and former director, Alanna Heiss, for the first few years of my time there. Heiss is an inspiring figure in the New York art scene, who prior to founding PS1 was organizing temporary exhibitions throughout NYC - even under the Brooklyn Bridge! While I was there, I co-founded Cleopatra’s with Bridget Donahue, Bridget Finn and Erin Somerville - friends and colleagues who were all working at galleries in New York at the time. We were really interested in creating an alternative space that was also a hub for curatorial experimentation in the Brooklyn neighborhood we all lived in. It was a really exciting project that provided an opportunity for artists to engage with ideas that might not otherwise fit into museum or for-profit gallery models. From there, I began working in university and college galleries, first Boston University Art Galleries and then at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. These types of spaces also felt like an interesting “alternative” - they have a built-in audience and collaborators consisting of students and educators across disciplines. University galleries are also the forward-facing entities and have the potential to be both a hub as well as a flexible site for intergenerational and hybrid experimentation. More recently, I have been involved in a number of projects here in Providence that have really opened up new ways of how I consider my own curatorial practice and focus. I am currently working as Executive Director for a fairly new public art organization that commissions artists - both local and national - to design basketball courts in city parks. This has been an amazing experience, particularly within the sphere of community outreach and engagement. There is a lot of on-the-ground work that goes into placemaking and community building, which feels like an absolute extension of my role as a curator/collaborator/organizer/facilitator. I have also been involved with a new visual arts grant funded by the Warhol Foundation called Interlace Grant Fund, which I co-administer with a wonderful group of cultural workers in Providence. The grant provides project grants for Providence-based artists, as well as emergency funding for artists in need. This work has brought me into conversation with an incredible range of artists and cultural workers throughout the city and is truly inspiring to be a part of.  

What inspired your decision to launch KMM Projects?

KMM Projects has been brewing abstractly for years! There have been many different points throughout my career where I have considered opening up a space. I love collaborating, experimenting and finding different ways to support and create visibility and context for artists and practices. I have been on the brink of starting spaces in every city I have lived in since Cleopatra’s. It almost happened when I was in LA with a wonderful friend and artist Jesse Stecklow, and it has certainly been on my mind here in Providence over the last few years. Last year a friend asked if I wanted to use a space in his East Providence building for a pop-up exhibition and I eagerly took him up on it. The show was an opportunity to further explore ideas around kinship and earthly connections after an exhibition I organized at Tufts University Art Galleries called Staying With the Trouble, as well as an opportunity to work outside of an institution. It was also an exciting occasion to bring together and contextualize the work of artists in Providence who I had been getting to know over the last five years with national artists that I have been working with throughout my career. The opening of ODDKIN and run of the show was beyond any expectations I had with an outpouring of folks coming through, an incredible review in The Boston Globe, and some unexpected sales! The culmination of support and enthusiasm for the show and space motivated me to turn it into an ongoing project.    

What are your goals or mission behind this curatorial project? What is your vision for the next few seasons of exhibitions?

These are great questions, which are still coming together. I like being able to stay flexible in order to respond to the contemporary moment. Right now the project is focused on contemporary art with a commitment to contextualizing pioneering and emerging artists. I have always worked with intergenerational artists whose work challenges narratives and that will continue at KMM Projects. The exhibitions will range from solo to group shows - the group shows always bringing together at least one Providence-based artist. Providence has an incredibly rich print scene and I am in conversation with a few folks about starting a little print/artist book shop in the space, as well as a flat file that will carry artist prints throughout the year. I am really excited to see the ways in which the project will evolve over the next few years!

KMM Projects is located in Providence, Rhode Island—can you talk a bit about that location and what the community is like there? Was there anything about this particular place that spurred the idea along? How did you find yourself in Providence?

There is a rich tradition of alternative art and music spaces and artist collectives in Providence, which has inspired me since I was a teenager growing up in Boston. My husband, the artist Jim Drain, was actually a part of the infamous Fort Thunder community - if you haven’t heard of it, look it up! RISD and Brown are academic forces in the city and bring an incredible range of professional artists and cultural producers to Providence, not to mention amazing students and young artists. There are more and more resources for artists and creatives, particularly in the last few years, which means more folks are staying and making a life in Providence. It is also an incredibly diverse city for such a small state - it actually ranks 16th as the most diverse communities in America!  We moved to Providence from Los Angeles in 2018 when we found out we were having a kid and wanted to be closer to family. It was a hard move - we loved LA, but once the pandemic hit there was no question that this was the right decision. I have been lucky to get to know many different artists and organizers throughout Providence through the range of work I do. Providence is a generous and generative city - it feels good to be a part of this little city.

Your first show at KMM Projects was OddKin, and as the gallery website describes: "The works that make up OddKin each consider a range of ways in which plants, animals, and humans might coexist through equitable caretaking, collaboration, mimicry, compassion, humor, and the general de-centering of humans." I love this theme, and have myself put together an exhibition that meanders through similar territory. What inspired this particular show at this time? What was the public reception of the work like?

I love that this is a mutually explored theme - you will have to tell me about your exhibition sometime! This show was inspired by a larger exhibition I curated at Tufts Art Galleries in Boston in 2021. It was a several year long project, made longer by the pandemic, that took its inspiration from philosopher Donna Haraway’s important book Staying With the Trouble. At the time, I was speaking with and visiting a lot of artists whose work was engaging ideas around utopia, world-building, queer ecology, the archive, and decolonizing strategies. Obviously these critical ideas and projects do not laid to rest once an exhibition goes up, so OddKin was an opportunity to further hone in on the specific relationships between plants, animals and humans as explored by the group of artists including: Sachiko Akiyama, Scott Alario, Polly Apfelbaum, Lindsay Beebe, Priscilla Carrion, Tamara Gonzales, Jackie Gendel, Jungil Hong, Benny Merris, Judd Schiffman and Faith Wilding. The public reception was tremendous -  we had a huge opening, a fantastic review in the Boston Globe and an ongoing slew of visitors weekly. I think the ideas at work in the exhibition really resonated with people. Climate justice, reimagining futures, confronting colonial histories, reorganizing the hierarchy of humans and animals - these are all such poignant and critical ideas and issues right now and they are not going away. Art is a powerful tool to communicate and strategize in these unprecedented times. 

As a curator, are there certain types of exhibitions that you tend to curate or themes you continue to return to?

Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, I am really interested in artists who reimagine and challenge narratives. I am also committed to working with underrecognized and intergenerational artists. It is so important to bring different generations of artists into conversation. I do not see the themes mentioned above as going away any time soon and I know I will continue to weave in these ideas throughout the next few years of programming at KMM Projects. 

I am a big fan of Tamara Gonzales' work! Congrats on the stunning show you curated at Providence College Galleries. I am more familiar with her works on canvas so the installation of large-scale wall and floor paintings were wonderful. How did this new take on her work come about?

Tamara is amazing and I had been waiting for the right opportunity to work with her. Providence College Galleries has this unique annual exhibition called On the Wall, instituted by the gallery director, Jamilee Lacy. On the Wall is an annual commission of large-scale work applied directly to the gallery walls, as an initiative at the College to explore traditions of the mural format. Tamara’s work is so expansive and playful - her use of textile and blocky figures are always pushing at the edges of her paintings. I loved the idea of giving her the space to bring the figure out of the parameters of a canvas and build a world in the gallery. The exhibition planning also took shape during the pandemic and on the heels of the social uprisings after the murder of George Floyd, and we talked alot about the urgency for joy. Tamara really took advantage of the space and the high ceilings - creating several figures whose feet and long legs reached to the very top of the gallery. Walking into the gallery you were positioned as a small participant in what she called Cosmic Recess! It was the largest painting Tamara has done to date and in conversions with her since, it is exciting to learn of the impact from this exhibition on her current bodies of work. 

You are also involved with My Homecourt, a non-profit that revitalizes neglected basketball courts with artwork, and a really fantastic mission. How have you seen these court transformations affect communities?

Yes, absolutely. As mentioned earlier, this project is all about community. We just opened our 2022 court designed by Providence-based artist and activist Lois Harada and at the celebration I spoke to a person my age who said he has been coming to the court since he was a 9 year old kid and that this caretaking and artwork means the world to him and his community. These testimonials mean we are doing our jobs right! One project that was particularly impactful was MHC’s 2019 court at the Omar Polanco Courts at Harriet and Sayles Park. MHC collaborated on the revitalization of two basketball courts in South Providence and dedicated them to the late Omar Polanco, a local young man who had lost his life to gun violence nearby. MHC partnered with the Institute for Study and Practice of Non-Violence, who worked closely with MHC and the Polanco family to engage in programming and festivities around the opening of the new courts. MHC selected artists whose work best reflected the neighborhood’s identity and experiences. A predominantly Dominican community still reeling from the loss of youth to gun violence, MHC commissioned Dominican-American artist Joiri Minaya, and Providence-based artist and activist Jordan Seaberry who designed an incredible pair of murals using imagery of lush flowers native to the Dominican Republic which are symbols of healing and peace. This is a perfect example of the power, heart, and soul of MHC.

You recently published a book titled TIE DYE: FASHION FROM HIPPIE TO CHIC. Congrats! How did this book come about? I love to tie-dye, and it looks like a really fun read! I'm so curious—what sparked this idea and can you walk us through the process of putting this together? 

Oh my gosh - this book…It started almost 7 years ago as a research project on the aesthetics and histories of tie-dye in the U.S. and Rizzoli picked it up. The book was on and off for years, it has changed throughout, and finally came to fruition this past spring. It feels a bit outside of my practice, but it was a fun book to make - sourcing images, speaking with designers and photographers and going through the editing process. It was really meaningful to center so many unbelievably talented designers and artists like Nor Back Nor White, Abacaxi, ASAI and KkCo. 

How do you balance your many different projects and life? Any tips that have helped you along the way?

I love wearing several different hats at once, it keeps me nimble and engaged, but it can also be exhausting! I have a calendar that my family and I share, which keeps me organized and I also make mega use out of my phone’s “to do” app. Lists and calendars are sacred in my life! Also, I have found that having a movement practice really helped with stress and clearing my head. I also watch a lot of TV late at night on my phone, which is embarrassing to admit! There is so much excellent TV right now: Reservation Dogs! Atlanta! A League of Their Own! Bad Sisters!

What's up next for you and the space?

I am currently working on a group show called Their Spirits Are Present: Performative Sculpture which will open October 21st at KMM Projects. The exhibition title is borrowed from a sticker made by the important indigenous artist Jeffrey Gibson and brings together a group of artists whose work is imbued with a range of histories and functions, both fictional and real. Each work invokes, inhabits and emanates presence beyond the physical realm. Included artists are: Andrea Perez Bessin, Jim Drain, Sika Foyer, Kelly Taylor Mitchell, and Lila Roo. I am also working on a large-scale exhibition with the artist Polly Apfelbaum - a kind of unsurvey/survey, which will take place at the deCordova Museum in Massachusetts in 2024. Polly and I have worked together for over a decade and I am thrilled to see this project come to fruition. Lastly, I am working on a show with the Los Angeles-based artist Cammie Staros, whose work and practice I got to know when I was living in LA. The focused exhibition will take place in 2024 at Providence College Galleries. Cammie’s work in ceramics and installation mine Classical antiquities and the contexts in which we view them - she is incredible. Lots of exciting projects lined up!

Anything else you'd like to add?

Just gratitude for Maake’s support and interest! It is so vital to create platforms for emerging artists and to expand upon what emerging can mean and look like. Thanks for all of your incredible work - what a resource!

Thanks so much for talking with us!

To find out more about KMM Projects check them out on Instagram or on their website.