Robin Jamkatel
MFA ’26 Photography
Temporal Kingdom
“For so long I have wanted to escape into the dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies.“ — Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
In Temporal Kingdom, I examine the paranoia, anxiety, and growing apathy that are born from a history of abuse inflicted upon black and brown communities in the United States. This history has shaped my own reading of the American landscape. I cast my eyes towards the ordinariness of spaces, considering the potential for political trauma faced by communities like my own. I photograph the neighborhoods where people are being targeted, and I react to an environment that bears no evidence of violence.
My images recontextualize the vantage point of someone who lives there, knowing that they could be next. Through the use of fragmentation, spatial relationships, smooth tonal value, and the layering of texture, I am visually mapping the aesthetics and architecture of systemic oppression, revealing the quiet anxiety of existing in these neighborhoods as a person of color. The stillness of these scenes emphasize the silence and invisibility of the issues that surround them. I am rejecting the colonial urge of easy legibility and the creation of a simple catalog. The violence is not framed; it is the omnipresent force reflected in the structure of the houses, the deterioration of the fences, and the organization of the streets.
Robin Jamkatel (b.1996) is a visual artist born in Kathmandu, Nepal, raised in the Chicagoland area, and currently based in Boston, MA. His photographic practice investigates the intersections of shared history, institutional structures, and the psycho-emotional geography of marginalized communities in the United States. Through a lens of cultural displacement and resilience, Robin’s work seeks to challenge dominant narratives while documenting the nuanced, lived experiences of individuals navigating complex social and political landscapes.
