Kearra Amaya Gopee: Carnegie Mellon University School of Art Visiting Artist Lecture Series

Co-presented by Carnegie Museum of Art and the CMU School of Art

Join us for an evening with artist Kearra Amaya Gopee as they share an in-depth look at their practice and the works featured in If the word we, 59th Carnegie International. This lecture is free and open to the public.

Register Now →

About the Artist

Kearra Amaya Gopee (born 1994, Miami, FL, raised in Carapichaima, Kairi (Trinidad and Tobago); lives on Lenape land in New York) is an anti-disciplinary artist and facilitator. Using video, sculpture, sound, and writing, they identify both violence and time as primary conditions that undergird the anti-Black world in which they work. Gopee has shown work at documenta 15, Kassel, Germany (2022), and The Kitchen, among other international film venues. They have participated in residencies at Skowhegan, the International Studio and Curatorial Program, Headlands Center for the Arts, and NLS Kingston. They have been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, the Leslie Lohman Museum, Queer|Art, and the Global Fund for Women. In 2024, Gopee was an Elaine G. Weitzen Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. They have lectured at Emory University, Rutgers University, and the Caltech-Huntington Program in Visual Culture. In 2025, Gopee was an artist in residence at MASS MoCA. They hold an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles, with a concentration in interdisciplinary studio and a BFA in photography and imaging from New York University.

Finding Carnegie Museum of Art Art Theater

The theater is located on the ground floor of the Carnegie Museum of Art. From the main entrance of the museum, head down the stairs to the right of the reception desk and the theater will be at the end of the corridor. If you are entering from the parking lot at the rear of the museum, the theatre will be immediately to your right.

About If the word we, 59th Carnegie International

Organized every four years by Carnegie Museum of Art, the Carnegie International is the longest-running exhibition of international art in North America. The 59th edition is the most collaborative and far-reaching to date — a clear expression of the museum’s founding commitment to the art and artists of our time, at once grounded in our locality and extending globally.

Titled If the word we, the 59th Carnegie International considers the first-person plural as an open and evolving proposition — one shaped by listening, translation, and transformation — bringing together artistic practices that engage shared experience, circulation, and worlds in transition. Drawing from a commissioned catalogue essay by writer Haytham el-Wardany, the exhibition approaches “we” not as a unified subject but as a complex and porous position, attentive to contradiction and change. Across a wide range of media, from painting, photography, and sculpture, to installation, video, performance, and theater, participating artists traverse cultural, political, intellectual, and spiritual geographies that extend beyond national boundaries. The projects emerge through everyday acts, materials, and environments, offering spatially expansive portraits of collective life in the present.

About the Visiting Artist Lecture Series

The Carnegie Mellon School of Art Lecture Series is made possible in part by Elizabeth (Thompson) and Thomas M. Cox (A’29) Distinguished Artists Funds, Robert L. Lepper Distinguished Lecture in Creative Inquiry, and Orville M. Winsand Lecture for Critical Studies.

Carnegie Mellon makes every effort to provide accessible facilities and programs for individuals with disabilities. This publication can be made available in an alternate format upon request. For accommodations, contact the School of Art at schoolofart@cmu.edu or 412.268.2409. Lecture and event details are subject to change or cancellation.