About
Kesiena Onosigho is a visual artist, natural dyer, textile researcher + educational architect based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Through the study of materials and patterns Kesiena’s practice explores the intersections of materiality, diasporic memory, and environmental justice. Working across mixed-media collage, textiles, natural dyes, botanical pigments, and site-specific social practice, she reimagines overlooked and foraged matter into atmospheric abstractions that invite viewers to reconsider what, and whose stories, are considered valuable.
Rooted in her lived experience and informed by the histories of craft across the African Diaspora, Onosigho approaches making as both research, reclamation and remembrance. Her process is intentionally slow and experimental, allowing materials to guide discovery while challenging conventional distinctions between art, craft, design and sustainability. Through layered fibers, handmade pigments, recycled matter and symbolic forms, she develops material vocabularies that become meditations on resilience, complexity, and possibility.
Kesiena’s practice asks us to look more closely: at materials, inherited histories, systems of consumption, and the beauty that can emerge from what has been undervalued. Her work positions sustainability not simply as method, but as a way of thinking, connecting, excavating, and imagining more liberated futures rooted in reciprocity, care, and love.
Using her multidisciplinary, process-based artistic practice as a foundation, Onosigho created KEPT studio, a creative eco-studio that takes an inventive approach to preserving art and material culture by pushing the boundaries of ecological mapping and material exploration. Alongside a deep focus on cultivating connection through natural dye explorations in Brooklyn, KEPT studio participates in socially engaged practice and creative gatherings, architecting space for fellow creatives to explore how overlooked items, like foraged food scraps, can create beauty and inspire environmentally meaningful ways of thinking and making.
KESIENA graduated from Parsons School of Design, with a BFA. At Parsons she started her journey into sustainable design and material exploration. After graduation, she was recruited to join Nike’s Flyknit innovation team at their WHQ in Beaverton, OR. At Nike she received a holistic view of how to create revolutionary knit products: With access to Nike’s infamous innovation kitchen, exclusive visits to Nike’s fabled DNA archive, and complete visibility to Nike’s proprietary flyknit supply chain. Passionate about championing and supporting a wider range of artistic & sustainable projects, she moved back to NY. Consumed by a love of innovation and industrial knitting, she began working at Stoll Knit Resource in New York, where she worked with a wide range of clients. Prior to Nike & Stoll, KESIENA’s strong sense of the fashion landscape came from her experience working with the creative teams at Lanvin, Calvin Klein, Theyskens’ Theory, Alexander Wang, and with the legendary Pat McGrath.
CV UPON REQUEST
For inquiries about consulting, potential collaborations, custom artwork or just to say hello, please contact: hellostudio@kesiena.com or @kesiena via instagram.
