App State Alumnus Kameron Neal Returns to Boone for Visiting Lecture Series
The Appalachian State University Department of Art Visiting Lecture Series welcomes artist and designer Kameron Neal, a 2014 graduate of the BFA in Graphic Design program, on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. in the I.G. Greer Hall Auditorium. Neal, whose practice spans video, installation, performance and graphic design, will share his work, his creative journey and his perspective on building an interdisciplinary design practice.
Now based in Brooklyn, Neal returns to campus months after winning first prize in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s 2025 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. His two-channel video installation “Down the Barrel (of a Lens)” (2023) was selected from more than 3,300 submissions. The prize includes a $25,000 award and a commission to create a portrait of a living person for the museum’s permanent collection. The work appeared in “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and was also featured in “Greater New York 2026” at MoMA PS1. The Washington Post called it a “bombshell piece.”
Neal created the piece as a Public Artist in Residence with New York City’s Department of Records. Drawing on declassified New York Police Department surveillance footage filmed between 1960 and 1980, the installation uses 16mm film shot by plainclothes intelligence officers documenting Vietnam War protests, Black Panther activists, and figures including Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. The footage plays on opposing screens to the steady sound of a ticking clock. One screen shows the people under surveillance, while the other reveals the officers themselves testing their cameras, making faces and hurling profanity. “I was specifically interested in the relationship between the person doing the recording and the people being recorded,” Neal told The New York Times in 2023.
Neal’s work extends well beyond the gallery. As a projection designer, he received Lucille Lortel and Henry Hewes Design Awards for Ryan J. Haddad’s “Dark Disabled Stories” at The Public Theater. With writer and director Shayok Misha Chowdhury, he has collaborated on “MukhAgni” and “Rheology,” multimedia performance memoirs about death presented at The Bushwick Starr, the Under the Radar Festival and, this past spring, Playwrights Horizons. His collaboration with composer Paul Pinto, “Whiteness: Part One,” an immersive 360-degree video cantata, earned an Opera America Award.
His honors also include a Creative Capital Award, The Vineyard Theatre’s Colman Domingo Award, a Princess Grace Award and recognition from the Type Directors Club. He has held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Lincoln Center’s Social Sculpture Project, CultureHub, Bemis, ALL ARTS and Ars Nova’s Makers Lab, and his work has been presented at Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Museum of the City of New York and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum. Neal was a 2024–25 Movement Lab Fellow in the Film/Animation/Video Department at the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently an Interdisciplinary Fellow with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
A Raleigh native, Neal worked at App State’s Smith Gallery as a student, designing posters, postcards and other promotional materials for the gallery’s exhibitions and programs.
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from Neal as he returns to App State. Join the Department of Art for an inspiring conversation about creativity, experimentation and where a career in design can lead.
