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Titus Kaphar
Oil, gold leaf and tar on wood panel
7 × 10 ½ in.
Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
©Titus Kaphar
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As protests against police brutality continue across the
United States in the wake of the deaths of Eric Garner in New York and Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, contemporary artists have joined
the debate in artworks of extraordinary power and grace. From the Occupy
Movement, to LGBT rights, to Black Lives Matter, to the issues surrounding “Je suis Charlie”, contemporary art, often of a representational bent, helps shed light on the
complex nature of our times.
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| Feroze Alam and Ravinder Padam Ferguson |
As a contemporary artist, I find it
necessary to engage in the issue of social justice in my own artwork, and have
found myself part of a disparate but powerful artistic community of painters and sculptors from Feroze Alam and Ravinder Padam in
London, to Titus Kaphar, Kehinde Wiley and Joy Garnett in New York, to Paint for Peace in St.
Louis, to Mark Vallen in Los Angeles, to David Dalla Venezia in Venice, Italy.
For the past four years, I have been an invited lecturer on
Art and Social Justice at UCLA and drawing from the content of my lectures and
the feedback I have received from students and faculty, I aim to deepen and
expand the dialogue. Art goes beyond the mere
hashtag to the heart of the matter in the social struggles of our times.
I will start on Monday with a piece on the beautifully provocative art of Titus Kaphar which is currently on view at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which offers free admission today - Saturday, January 31st. I hope you join me in this journey.
