His film Assembly is more than just documentation of a performance. It’s a kind of communion.
Damien Davis
Damien Davis is a Newark-based artist and educator originally from Crowley, Louisiana, and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. His practice explores cultural representation and identity through a distinctive visual language that recontextualizes symbols from diverse cultures, challenging historical narratives and inviting new interpretations.
Posted inOpinion
Juneteenth Is the Story of a Freedom Withheld
In the art world, as in America at large, spectacle is welcomed more readily than structural change.
Posted inOpinion
We’re Not Your Pride Publicity Stunt
For many Black queer artists, Pride Month doesn’t feel like a celebration. It feels like extraction.
Posted inOpinion
Let It Burn
For Black people, watching the Nottoway plantation go up in flames felt like witnessing a lie collapse under the weight of truth.
Posted inOpinion
Manufacturing “Black Fatigue” in the Art World
Behind the declining demand for Black portraiture, and the backlash against Thomas J Price’s Times Square sculpture, lurks a strategic campaign of erasure.
Posted inOpinion
Who’s Afraid of Successful Black Artists?
This spring, New York’s museums feature four Black artists in major solo exhibitions. Some in the media are not happy about it.
Posted inBook Review
Returning the Gaze of Ancient Egyptian Funerary Portraits
As an artist, reading Euphrosyne Doxiadis’s book made me consider how we can draw inspiration from Egyptian art while engaging it thoughtfully — reverently, even.
Posted inInterview
Ron Norsworthy’s Revolution of Queer Black Male Self-Love
Norsworthy and I sat down to discuss his recent works, which wield the Ancient Greek myth of Narcissus to examine the power of beauty, who defines it, and how we can reclaim it.