Group Exhibition
Ongoing
Kenturah Davis features in 'Objects of Desire'
MoMA Floor 2, Gallery 209, New York, USA
“I think the question of readability and unreadability projected onto a body is an experience all of us have to think about and understand,” the artist Glenn Ligon has reflected. Touching on themes of legibility and identity, the artworks in this gallery pose the question: What roles do desire and history play in how we understand and recognize each other?
'Contending with Contingency I', 2021 by Kenturah Davis features in group presentation 'Objects of Desire' in MoMA's collection gallery. Drawing from literary texts, personal narratives, and references from the past, the artists on view here transform their sources to consider the promise of human relationships and reflect on the pain of fraught histories— particularly around Blackness. These acts of transformation open up a spectrum of experiences, as well as invite viewers to bring their own desires to the experience of looking. “What Black people have always done is taken what’s there and turned it,” Ligon has said. “Taking something and making it joyous.”
This display was organised by Lanka Tattersall, Laurenz Foundation Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, with Gee Wesley, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance.