Kenya Robinson is a self-taught 33-year-old artist whose work has tweaked gender and racial stereotypes, in pieces involving things like melted plastic combs, synthetic blond hair and women’s magazines.

In January, she decided to become a nomad for a spell, and call it art.

For 13 weeks, Ms. Robinson offered herself up as a guest (10 hours of housework included, but the host must supply the toothpaste) to anyone who would have her. Her proposal went out by e-mail to art world colleagues , who forwarded it around.

She named the project “The Inflatable Mattress,” though by week 10 , her mattress had deflated, a casualty of this collision of couch surfing, relational aesthetics and performance art. Ms. Robinson, however, had not.

Ms. Robinson knows that the best guests combine a talent for conversation with a knack for domestic flexibility and extreme self-effacement. For Simone Leigh (week one, Trader Joe’s peppermint toothpaste), a sculptor, she helped the artist in her studio . For Bettina Goolsby (week three, Colgate Triple Action), an actor , Ms. Robinson played personal organizer, and decluttered the space. For Legacy Russell (week five, Colgate Whitening), a curator and the studio director of the Bruce High Quality Foundation, the mischievous arts collective that likes to poke fun at the art world, she did the dishes.

“At first, I thought she was couch surfing,” Ms. Russell said. “Artists are always in some sort of transition.” Ms. Russell shares her two-bedroom apartment with her girlfriend, a lawyer .

To explain Ms. Robinson’s New York City tour, Ms. Russell put on her curator hat: “She’s co-opting a social form - couch surfing - that’s part of the material fabric of modern life, and then putting it in the public sphere. So what does that feel like? To be honest, it was like having a close friend stay at your house. Plus she was super-tidy. I missed her when she left.”

Ms. Robinson, who has worked as a fashion designer and a pattern maker, said performance began seeping into her work as she began playing, for example, with passages plucked from trashy novels she bought on 125th Street .

“I like that she engages other artists in her projects,” said Rashida Bumbray, associate curator at the Kitchen, who visited Ms. Robinson during her week at Ms. Leigh’s apartment. “Also, it reminds me of the durational practices that used to happen in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s.”

Ms. Russell described Ms. Robinson’s project as a “voyeuristic seven-day portal into the lives of others.”

Early in April, Ms. Robinson learned she had been accepted into the master’s program in sculpture at Yale University . She’ll be looking for somewhere to stay.


By PENELOPE GREEN