Voiceless (Primary Title)
Titus Kaphar, American, born 1976 (Artist)
Sometimes the fear of the past keeps us from pursuing our future, and in that sense it’s necessary for us to leave where we are to get to where we want to be. —Titus Kaphar Kaphar’s work addresses history—not as a fixed record of the past but as a mutable account subject to deconstruction and reconstruction in the present. Kaphar paints his own versions of 18th- and 19th-century portraits, landscapes, and history paintings. He then defaces them by folding, cutting, and covering over—removing or obscuring figures to subvert expected narrative and allow new meanings to arise. The new narratives often concern tensions between absence and presence, as in Voiceless, where the figure, an African American, is partly obscured by a haze of paint and represents a group pushed to the margins of the Western tradition of art if included at all.
Gift of Pamela K. and William A. Royall, Jr.
© Titus Kaphar
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