Jahniah Kum
Driftwood:
Sometimes
I Think of Home.
50 4th St
Troy, NY 12180
Exhibition Dates:
July 17 - August 15, 2026
Artist Reception:
July 23, 2026
5-6PM
Artist Talk:
July 23, 2026
6PM
Artists Talk & Walk with Jahniah Kum & Kiki Vassilakis
Collar Works and Context Collective are proud to present a collaborative Artist Walk & Talk featuring concurrent exhibitions by Jahniah Kum and Kiki Vassilakis.
The evening begins at 6:00 PM at Collar Works with a gallery talk by Artist-in-Residence Jahniah Kum, discussing her exhibition, "Driftwood: Sometimes I Think of Home". At 7:00 PM, attendees will take a short guided walk to Context Collective for a conversation with exhibiting artist Kiki Vassilakis about her exhibition, "ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ" (the Greek word for "Freedom").
Through distinct artistic practices and personal perspectives, both artists explore themes of home, identity, belonging, memory, and freedom. Each will share insights into their creative process, the ideas that inform their work, and how place and cultural connection shape their artistic expression.
Artists Talk & Walk
Thursday, July 23, 6PM - 8:30PM
6:00 PM — Jahniah Kum at Collar Works, 50 4th street
7:00 PM — Walk to Context Collective, 1.5 blocks
7:15 PM — Kiki Vassilakis at Context Collective, 95 4th street
Free and open to the public.
Collar Works is pleased to announce ‘Driftwood: Sometimes I Think of Home’ by Jahniah Kum.
Jahniah Kum is an interdisciplinary Caribbean-American artist whose work tends to the evolving shape of grief through self-portraiture, material experimentation, storytelling, and family archive.
Shaped by the loss of Kum’s mother in 2019, and informed by bell hooks’s framework of “re-membering,” Kum’s practice navigates the question: What does it mean to be whole when something vital is missing? Functioning both as a compass and mirror–creating tension that dissects themes of: identity, belonging, loss, memory, and girlhood.
Through self-portraiture and materiality, Kum surveys this question, projecting my fears onto a recurring figure who inhabits psychological landscapes I cannot personally bear. Engaging with the framework of the body as an archive, this figure first emerged as a site of reclamation but has since evolved into a threshold where binaries: figurative and abstract, presence and absence, memory and transformation, folklore and reality can coexist.
Jahniah Kum (b. 1997, Albany, NY) is an interdisciplinary visual artist born to Theresa from Hanover, Jamaica and Simeon, from Linden, Guyana. Both parents immigrated to the United States as children and their love and wisdom transcends through the work she creates. Kum credits her parents' love as the sole reason for her ability to be an artist today.
Kum spent her formative years between Albany, NY and Montego Bay, Jamaica. Attending primary school and experiencing a childhood in Jamaica that gave her the freedom to be curious as a child. Painting the veranda walls of her home and having time to roam her community of Tower Hill to find land crabs—one of her many hobbies as a child. These foundational years inform her colorful palette and nostalgia within her practice.
Kum earned an A.S. in Fine Arts from Hudson Valley Community College (2020), a B.A. in Studio Art from the University at Albany (2023) and a MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work has been exhibited in a range of group exhibitions, including the annual Mohawk Hudson Regional Show, a solo exhibition at the Spare Room Gallery in Baltimore and the Peale Museum of Art. Her recent exhibitions include her first international shows at Stazlab in Kingston, Jamaica (2026) and Heartbeatink Gallery in Athens, Greece. Caregiving and maintaining her practice Kum splits her time between Baltimore, MD and Albany, NY. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Collar Works in, Troy, New York.
Above Image: Jahniah Kum, Longing, Oil on canvas, 68 x 37 1/2 in, 2024.