Kenturah Davis (1984 - )
Kenturah Davis is a multimedia artist who has worked globally, from Los Angeles to New Haven to Accra, Ghana. Davis’ work walks the line between traditional portraiture, painting and art installation. She describes her pieces as “text drawings,” compositions that blend the written word with the faces of her subjects. The medium of charcoal and pencil sketches is deeply tied to her own cultural heritage, where she describes the act of drawing as something nearly “ancestral.” Using text as a point of departure, she explores the fundamental role that language has in shaping the way people understand each other and the world around them. Davis’ use of abstraction to blur the boundaries between text and visual graphics often presents a surreal evocation of her subjects that highlight the inner contradictions within human nature. Davis has shown her artwork in exhibitions in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. She continues to explore new material mediums, challenging the boundaries of conventional art forms and subjects by hybridizing her love of language with visual arts and social activism.
Blur in the Interest of Precision (2018). Oil paint applied with rubber stamp letters on color ground on paper. 32 x 24.5 inches framed. (Courtesy of Matthew Brown Los Angeles Gallery)
Study for Entanglements (2019). Hand-written text of ink and grease pencil, with aerosol painted shadow on DMH11 kozo paper. 200 x 100 inches. (courtesy of Jenkins Johnson Gallery)