Kenturah Davis

Blur in the Interest of Precision is a search for parallel conditions between the poetics of our visual experience and the strangeness of our relationship to language. We often use language to carve out distinctions between one thing and another. Davis' objective—to complicate ideas about meaning, representation and perception—have found refuge in blur and doubling. The new drawings are rendered with arrangements of text, but the words are virtually illegible. Many of the portraits pursue ideas the artist is working through via the writings of Fred Moten and Toni Morrison’s essay, Sites of Memory.

Davis’ work oscillates between various facets of portraiture and design. Using text as a point of departure, the artist explores the fundamental role that language has in shaping how we understand ourselves and the world around us. This manifests in a variety of forms including drawings, photographs and performances.

Davis lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and Accra, Ghana. The artist earned her BA from Occidental College, CA and MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2018. Her work has been presented in institutional exhibitions in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe, notably in, We Must Risk Delight, organized in collaboration with the 56th Venice Biennale.

Exhibitions include Linked in Tradition, Inspiring in Vision: A Selection of Works by African American Women Artists, Robert and Frances Museum of Art, San Bernadino, CA (2017); Black Joy, Yale University, New Haven, CT (2016); We Must Risk Delight, at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); The Silence of Ordinary Things, The Mistake Room, Los Angeles (2015); i:23, The Yokohama Triennial, Yokohama, Japan (2014); An American Water Margin, Ucity Museum, Guangzhou, China (2014); Mass Attack at the Torrance Art Museum, CA (2013); Mis-Design, Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, Australia (2011).

Solo exhibitions include Narratives and Meditations (2014) and sonder (2013), Papillion, Los Angeles. Public projects include Four Women, a commissioned mural by Alliance Française to commemorate International Women’s Day, in Accra, Ghana and Métamorphose, comprised of five portraits commissioned by architect, Elliott Barnes, featured in Barnes’  installation at the L’Exposition AD Interieurs, Paris, France. Currently, the artist is a fellow at NXTHVN, founded by Titus Kaphar and Jonathan Brand and a DAMLI fellow at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Forthcoming exhibitions include, Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary, curated by Essence Harden and Leigh Raiford at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA and a two-person exhibition with Desmond Lewis at Crosstown Arts, Memphis, TN in coordination with the traveling venue, Seed Space. Notably, Davis was commissioned by the Los Angeles Metro Rail to create large-scale, site-specific work that will be permanently installed on the new Crenshaw/LAX rail line, opening in 2020.