Titus Kaphar

Titus Kaphar, a painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and installation artist, challenges historical norms by deconstructing classical forms and visual styles prevalent in Western art. He aims to overturn these conventions, unraveling established narratives from their perceived position in the past to scrutinize their influence on contemporary times. In doing so, Kaphar reveals the foundational ideas behind disputed nationalist histories and colonial legacies, shedding light on their role in shaping cultural and individual identities.

Biography of Titus Kaphar

Titus Kaphar was born in 1976, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He earned an MFA from the Yale School of Art and has received numerous prestigious awards and honors, including a 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. Kaphar's artwork "Analogous Colors" was featured on the cover of TIME's June 15, 2020 issue.

Kaphar's work has been showcased in solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Seattle Art Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, among others.

His art is part of prominent collections, including the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, the 21C Museum Collection, the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit, The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, among others.

Titus Kaphar's Art Style

Employing deconstructive methods such as cutting, shredding, stitching, binding, and erasing, Titus Kaphar reconstructs new codes and forms, envisioning Black possibilities. In "Yet Another Fight for Remembrance" (2014), he obscured a group of African American men in the "Hands up, don't shoot" pose with thick white brushstrokes, then outlined them in black to assert their formal presence. This act turned the painting process itself into a symbol of the ongoing struggle for social visibility and acknowledgment.

Kaphar's art not only delves into pressing social and political issues but also emerges from his personal narrative. One such example is his ongoing multimedia project, "The Jerome Project" (2014–), born from his encounter with his estranged father, Jerome. This series of portraits began when Kaphar stumbled upon the online mug shots of ninety-seven African American men who shared his father's first and last names. He creates gilded portraits of each man in the style of Byzantine devotional icons, then submerges them in tar.

In works like "Behind the Myth of Benevolence" (2014) and the ongoing series "Seeing Through Time" (2017–), Kaphar employs the visual techniques and approaches of prominent European classicists such as Diego Velázquez, Jacques-Louis David, and Théodore Géricault to rewrite narratives of cultural empowerment with Black subjects. Just as historical circumstances and contexts propelled twentieth-century artists to develop radical aesthetic concepts and forms — think of the profound impact of the Second World War on artists like Pablo Picasso, Albert Burri, Ibrahim El-Salahi, and Norman Lewis — Kaphar's art responds to the evident anxieties of present-day America.

In his latest series of paintings, "From a Tropical Space" (2019–), Kaphar constructs a surreal and emotionally charged landscape that is distinctly his own, firmly grounded in the contemporary moment. Drawing from his in-depth exploration of nineteenth-century painting techniques, he presents saturated, artificially colored suburban settings against which women and the silhouettes of their absent children are juxtaposed. These charged and enigmatic scenes both complicate and intensify with the addition of artificial hues, resonating with the tumultuous and uncertain times we currently inhabit. This work coincides with a resurgence of sociopolitical vigor and thematic content within the broader realm of figurative painting, illustrating how Kaphar's images echo the complexities of our contemporary era.