TITUS KAPHAR
Born 1976, Kalamazoo, MI
Resides New Haven, CT
EDUCATION
2006 MFA, Yale University, School of Art, New Haven, CT
2001 BFA, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009 Reconstruction Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, CA
History in the Making Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
2008 Painting Undone Red Gallery, Savannah College of Art and Design
2005 New Revolution Yale Art Gallery, Trumbull Gallery, New Haven, CT
2004 Erace-ing Art History Provisions Library, Washington, D.C.
Visual Quotations Anno Domini Gallery, San Jose, CA
2000 The House That Crack Built San Jose State University Gallery 2, San Jose, CA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2009 Your Gold Teeth II, curated by Todd Levin, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY
2008 Macrocosm Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, CA
Cancelled, Erased & Removed Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, NY
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Museum, Kalamazoo, MI
2007 Blur Arndt Partner Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song Von Lintel Gallery, New York, NY
Midnights Daydream The Studio Museum In Harlem, New York, NY
My Love Is a 187 The Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Salon Nouveau Galerie Engholm Engelhorn, Vienna, Austria
2006 Lag-Time Line-up Mumbo Jumbo Gallery, New York, NY
Materiality Kravets Wheby Gallery, New York, NY
School Days Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, NY
2004 Edges Euphrat Museum of Art, Cupertino, CA
2003 Stop Art Gallery, San Jose, CA
2002 Studio 110, Re-Presenting Ourselves San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
Mountain View City Hall, Mountain View, CA
2001 The African-American Spirit in Contemporary Art Mexican Heritage Plaza, San Jose, CA
San Jose State University, Africana Center, San Jose, CA
2000 Black Artists: Creations San Francisco African American Historical & Cultural Society, Fort
Mason Center, San Francisco, CA
Lockheed Martin, Sunnyvale, CA
"...of Subversion and Dominance" San Jose Art League, San Jose, CA
AWARDS
2009 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Fellowship Recipient, Seattle Art Museum, February 2009
2006 Artist in Residence, The Studio Museum In Harlem, October 4, 2006
2004 Belle Arts Foundation Grantee, January 2004
2001 California Arts Council Grantee, December 2001
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2009 Douglas, Sarah. Summer in the City: Group Shows. Art Info July 24, 2009
Golden, Thelma. Elsewhere: Art Beyond the Studio Museum. The Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine Spring 2009: 18-19
Carlson, Michele. History in the Making: Titus Kaphar Cuts up to Rebuild. Art in America May 20, 2009
Psyllos, Steven. Creative Time. GIANT May 2009: 32
Miller, Brian. Titus Kaphar. Seattle Weekly April 22, 2009
Seattle Museum Honors Titus Kaphar. Huliq News April 21, 2009
Hamilton, Kerry Campbell. Titus Kaphar: a fresh view of american history. Seattle Art Museum Examiner April 15, 2009
Graves, Jen. Titus Kaphar, Pushing His Own Damn Boat. The Stranger Slog Monday, April 13, 2009
Seattle Art Museum Honors Titus Kaphar, Inaugural Fellowship Recipient, with a solo
exhibition. Artdaily.org April 12, 2009
Shiloh, Ramon. Seattle Art Museum Honors Titus Kaphar. Colors March 30, 2009
2008 Harvey, Phillip. The View From Now Trends In the Idiom of Young African American Artists.
The International Review of African American Art Volume 22, No 2: 2-14
Titus Kaphar: Painting Undone. Savannah: SCAD Exhibitions, 2008
Wall, Katie. Kaphar challenges traditional perspectives. The SCAD Chronicle March 7, 2008
2007 Schwendener, Martha. Three Contemporaries, Each With a Different Way to View the Past.
The New York Times August 11, 2007
2005 The Art of Cut-and-Paste. The Yale Bulletin & Calendar December 16, 2005
2004 From the Margins of Art History, a Painters Minority Report. Washington Post April 11, 2004
KPFA Radio Interview. Berkeley and Washington, D.C., February/April 2004
Erace-ing Art History. Provisions Library Spring 2004
2003 Artist Repaints Historys Blackout. San Jose Mercury News December 7, 2003
This is the use of memory:
For liberation not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past.
T. S. Eliot
Over the next two and a half years I will be studying and painting portraits of thirty individuals whose lives I want to remember. Men and women, past and present, whose time in this world was sacrificial and heroic. People whose words and actions altered the course of history. I intend to keep all of these pieces together until the final one is complete, so that the memories of these individuals might remain in dialogue with one another. This site will document the progression of the project, the dialogue between the individuals, and the portraits that are the fruit of their memory.
What makes a life worth remembering? Over the last two years Ive thought much about that question. I imagine these thoughts are related to the birth of my two sons and the death of a close friend. Of course, all life is valuable and therefore should be remembered. There are, however, lives that are so given to peace and justice, that culture and society are transformed. I am not speaking of celebrity. Some of these individuals have died in obscurity, only to be celebrated long after their deaths. The remembrance that Im interested in may have eventually led to a kind of fame, but for this investigation I want to focus on lives in which the work preceded the fame. My hope is that in listening to the voices of these individuals, and learning from their actions, I might be transformed by their memory.
