Kenny Cairo (1996, Guadeloupe) is a multimedia artist and cultural worker based between Guadeloupe and Paris. His work explores the intersections of human relations, recording practices, and the experience of landscape. Through multimedia performances, installations, and writing, he investigates how individuals connect with each other — through friendship, international solidarities, and acts of mutual support — as well as with their environments and the objects that inhabit them.
His recent work about the Caribbean region has mostly focused on the experience of natural hazards, and how local communities respond to emergency situations.
Rooted in his trajectory of mobility between the Caribbean and Europe, Cairo often works with fragile materials such as paper, ceramics, second-hand machines, or recordings, and questions their resistance, obsolescence, and capacity to carry biographies. This material engagement extends to colonial archives and research-based practices, through collaborations with Coco Fusco, Contemporary & Magazine, the Caribbean digital library Manioc.org, and the Université des Antilles.
The research conducted as part of his master’s degree (2022) at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, under the supervision of Jean-Marc Besse, marked a decisive turning point in his career. Titled «Le paysage sonore urbain : enquête et création – Porte de la Chapelle,» it explores the richness of interactions between sound recording and social relationships. Based on recordings made with young teenagers frequenting the Porte de la Chapelle neighborhood in Paris, a sonic mosaic composed of human voices, spontaneous stories, music, and everyday sounds emerges, reflecting an immersion in the diversity of Paris’s sonic landscape. This experience led to the composition «Que des bonnes nouvelles,» performed by a speaker orchestra at the Conservatoire George Bizet. That same year, his composition «Balade en métro» was featured at the International Jean Rouch Film Festival.
Between 2023 and 2024, he worked as a librarian at the Université des Antilles in Guadeloupe. He explored public programming, notably leading the sound project and literary event «Ti Pwen Poétik,» featuring authors Dory Sélèsprika and Murielle Clodine-Florent, as well as «Le Graffiti pour dire la Caraïbe» in collaboration with graffiti artist Yeswoo and university students.
In 2024, he was awarded the French programs La Relève, initiated by the Ministry of Culture, and Ondes, supported by the Ministry of Overseas Territories and the Cité internationale des arts.
In 2025, his sound installation “Dégâts mineurs” was presented at the Galerie de la Cité internationale des arts as part of the collective exhibition “D’ici 60 ans : Relayer,” curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Ana Janevski. The same year, his composition “Adorasyon” was broadcasted during the musical opera “How to build a sandcastle”, directed by Raphael R. Jacobs.
In 2026, his video and musical creation made for the choreographer Hubert Petit-Phar for the solo “Outre-rage” will be showcased at several events in the Caribbean, France and internationally.