Princess. Lowell, MA. 32 x 40 inches, 2025.

Untitled (”American Portraits”)
Canvas Matte Prints, Shadow Installation/Play, Various Sizes.
Chicago, IL 
Lowell, MA 
2025 - here. 


Glissant wrote we have a right to opacity—to exist without being made fully visible or known. The work begins here.

These portraits sit in darkness, not to obscure, but to assert another way of being—one that doesn’t explain itself or performs. What the subjects withhold is just as important as what they offer.

I’m interested in what opens up when we stop asking images to give us answers, when we let ourselves sit without knowing. Inspired by the speculative realist, I’m thinking about the Black body, not as a site of protest, but as a site of possibility—unknowable, complex, and infinite in refusal. 




ceninye.com



works

01.  Perhaps Here.

02.  Untitled “American Portraits”

03.  Son of Liberia.

04.  Princess.
05.  From Home.
06.  Self Portraits As An American Optimist.
commissioned  

07.  Design Museum Of Chicago

08.  Onyx, The Black Literary Experience.

09.  Africana Center.

10.  STYLE

11.  Mourning Walls .

12.  Through These Realities.

13.  MXFAM
about               

                 
              God is good,
              all the time. 




© 2025 Cenìnye Harris.  All  Rights Reserved.
 

there is this thing.
I speak vaguely because it’s hard for me to define.
it sits in the in-between, perhaps—the unseen, the here and there.
the future and the present.

       there is this thing.
this feeling, this incredible awe, this incredible—
the incredible discovery that I am living here.
that I am here.

It is amazing to think that I am here.
I don’t know how to make that clear.
that I know not of my origin—



                   that one day—poof!



                   
       I am here.



I am incredibly grateful for being here.
and to God be all the glory.