Awareness Post: Titus Kaphar
- lilybdavies
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Titus Kaphar is an American contemporary painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and installation artist whose work examines the history of representation and aims to dislodge history from its "status of the past" in order to consider its significance in modern context. His does this by reconfiguring his paintings and sculptures, revealing the aspects of his work that are typically hidden, like the stretcher of a canvas. These interior views are intended to mimic a look into the generally obscured parts of history.
Kaphar was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and currently lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended Yale School of ARt, where he received an MFA. He was the recipient of the 2018 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2018 Art for Justice Fund grant, a 2016 Robert R. Rauschenberg Artist as Activist grant, and a 2015 Creative Capital grant, among other awards. His work was featured on the cover of the June 15, 2020 issue of TIME, and he gave a TED talk in Vancouver in 2017 that included the completion of a whitewash painting, "Shifting the Gaze," onstage.
His exhibitions include:
Solo exhibitions at Seattle Art Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1 and National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, among others.
His work is included in the collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the 21C Museum Collection; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, amongst others.
In addition to his decorated artistic career so far, he also established NXTHVN, a national arts model that empowers emerging artists and curators of color through education and access. Since its founding five years ago, NXTHVN has encouraged artists, art professionals, and local entrepreneurs to expand New Haven's community.
I find the political commentary featured in Kaphar's work very appealing and done in a way that is both provocative and original. I think creating art that provides social critique can be difficult, as a clear meaning often requires a very literal piece, which lends itself easily to cliche work. But, I think Kaphar's use of tradition tehcniques like painting, combined with more original ones, like collage or tearing the painting off the canvas to reveal an image behind, effectively communicates his powerful message while maintaining the aesthetic appeal of a successful piece of art. Specifically, I really like "Behind the Myth of Benevolence," because less than half of Thomas Jefferson's face is visible, yet the use of a widely known portrait means that it is easily recognizable. The superimposed image of the president over the woman of color behind clearly references existing controversies over the appropriate way to remember very influential figures who were also slaveholders. Generally, Kaphar's work shares a very high quality finish that unifies it, while the method of collage or other display varies, maintaining diversity within an excellent body of work.
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