Can beauty open our hearts to difficult conversations?

An artwork's color or composition can pull you in -- and put you on the path to having important and difficult conversations, says artist Titus Kaphar. In this stunning talk, he reflects on his artistic evolution and takes us on a tour of his career -- from "The Jerome Project," which draws on religious icons to examine the US criminal justice system, to "From a Tropical Space," a haunting body of work that centers Black mothers whose children have disappeared. Kaphar also shares the idea behind NXTHVN, an arts incubator and community for young people in his hometown.

I believe there is beauty

in hearing the voices of people
who haven't been heard.

["Drawing the Blinds," 2014]

["The Jerome Project
(Asphalt and Chalk) III," 2014]

[Beneath an Unforgiving Sun
(From A Tropical Space)," 2020]

That's a complex idea,

because the things that must be said
are not always lovely.

But somehow,

if they're reflective of truth,

I think, fundamentally,
that makes them beautiful.

(Music)

There's the aesthetic beauty of the work

that in some cases functions
as more of a Trojan horse.

It allows one to open their hearts
to difficult conversations.

Maybe you feel attracted to the beauty,

and while compelled by the technique,

the color,

the form or composition,

maybe the difficult
conversation sneaks up.

["Billy Lee and Ona Judge
Portraits in Tar," 2016]

I really taught myself how to paint

by spending time at museums

and looking at the people that --

the artists, rather --
that I was told were the masters.

Looking at the Rembrandts
["The Night Watch"],

Renoir ["Luncheon of the Boating Party"],

Manet ["Luncheon on the Grass"],

it becomes quite obvious

that if I'm going to learn
how to paint a self-portrait

by studying those people,

I'm going to be challenged

when it comes to mixing my skin

or mixing the skin
of those people in my family.

There's literally formulas
written down historically

to tell me how to paint white skin --

what colors I should use
for the underpainting,

what colors I should use
for the impasto highlights --

that doesn't really exist for dark skin.

It's not a thing.

It's not a thing

because the reality is,
our skin wasn't considered beautiful.

The picture, the world that is represented
in the history of paintings

doesn't reflect me.

It doesn't reflect the things
that I value in that way,

and that's the conflict
that I struggle with so frequently,

is, I love the technique
of these paintings,

I have learned from the technique
of these paintings,

and yet I know that they have
no concern for me.

And so there are so many of us
who are amending this history

in order to simply say we were there.

Because you couldn't see
doesn't mean we weren't there.

We have been there.

We have been here.

We've continued to be seen
as not beautiful,

but we are,

and we are here.

So many of the things that I make

end up as maybe futile attempts
to reinforce that idea.

["Drawing the Blinds," 2014]

["Seeing Through Time," 2018]

Even though I've had the Western training,

my eye is still drawn
to the folks who look like me.

And so sometimes in my work,

I have used strategies like whiting out
the rest of the composition

in order to focus on the character
who may go unseen otherwise.

I have cut out other figures
from the painting,

one, to either emphasize their absence,

or two, to get you to focus
on the other folks in the composition.

["Intravenous (From
a Tropical Space)," 2020]

So "The Jerome Project," aesthetically,
draws on hundreds of years

of religious icon painting,

["The Jerome Project
(My Loss)," 2014]

a kind of aesthetic structure
that was reserved for the church,

reserved for saints.

["Madonna and Child"]

["Leaf from a Greek Psalter
and New Testament"]

["Christ Pantocrator"]

It's a project that is an exploration
of the criminal justice system,

not asking the question
"Are these people innocent or guilty?",

but more, "Is this the way
that we should deal with our citizens?"

I started a body of work,

because after being
separated from my father

for almost 15 years,

I reconnected with my father, and ...

I really didn't know how
to make a place for him in my life.

As with most things I don't understand,

I work them out in the studio.

And so I just started making
these portraits of mug shots,

starting because I did
a Google search for my father,

just wondering what had happened
over this 15-year period.

Where had he gone?

And I found his mug shot,
which of course was of no surprise.

But I found in that first search
97 other Black men

with exactly the same first and last name,

and I found their mug shots,
and that -- that was a surprise.

And not knowing what to do,

I just started painting them.

Initially, the tar was a formula
that allowed me to figure out

how much of these men's life
had been lost to incarceration.

But I gave up that,

and the tar became far more symbolic

as I continued,

because what I realized is

the amount of time that you spend
incarcerated is just the beginning

of how long it's going to impact
the rest of your life.

So in terms of beauty within that context,

I know from my friend's family

who have been incarcerated,

who are currently incarcerated,

folks want to be remembered.

Folks want to be seen.

We put people away for a long time,

in some cases,

for that one worst thing
that they've done.

So to a degree,

it's a way of just saying,

"I see you.

We see you."

And I think that, as a gesture,

is beautiful.

In the painting "Behind
the Myth of Benevolence,"

there's almost this curtain
of Thomas Jefferson

painted and pulled back
to reveal a Black woman who's hidden.

This Black woman is at once
Sally Hemings,

but she's also every other Black woman

who was on that plantation Monticello

and all the rest of them.

The one thing we do know
about Thomas Jefferson

is that he believed in liberty,

maybe more strongly than anyone
who's ever written about it.

And if we know that to be true,
if we believe that to be true,

then the only benevolent thing
to do in that context

would be to extend that liberty.

And so in this body of work,

I use two separate paintings

that are forced together
on top of one another

to emphasize this tumultuous
relationship between Black and white

in these compositions.

And so, that --

that contradiction,

that devastating reality
that's always behind the curtain,

what is happening
in race relations in this country --

that's what this painting is about.

The painting is called
"Another Fight for Remembrance."

The title speaks to repetition.

The title speaks to the kind of violence
against Black people

by the police

that has happened
and continues to happen,

and we are now seeing it happen again.

The painting is sort of editorialized
as a painting about Ferguson.

It's not not about Ferguson,

but it's also not not about Detroit,

it's also not not about Minneapolis.

The painting was started because

on a trip to New York

to see some of my own art
with my brother,

as we spent hours walking
in and out of galleries,

we ended the day by being stopped
by an undercover police car

in the middle of the street.

These two police officers
with their hands on their gun

told us to stop.

They put us up against the wall.

They accused me of stealing art

out of a gallery space
where I was actually exhibiting art.

And as they stood there
with their hands on their weapons,

I asked the police officer
what was different about my citizenship

than that of all of the other people

who were not being disturbed
in that moment.

He informed me that they had been
following us for two hours

and that they had been getting
complaints about Black men,

two Black men walking
in and out of galleries.

That painting is about the reality,

that it's not a question

of if this is going to happen again,

it's a question of when.

This most recent body of work
is called "From a Tropical Space."

This series of paintings
is about Black mothers.

The series of paintings takes place
in a supersaturated,

maybe surrealist world,

not that far from the one we live in.

But in this world,

the children of these Black women

are disappearing.

What this work is really about
is the trauma,

the things that Black women
and women of color in particular

in our community

have to struggle through
in order to set their kids out

on the path of life.

What's encouraging for me

is that this practice of mine

has given me the opportunity

to work with young people in my community.

I'm quite certain
the answers are not in me,

but if I'm hopeful at all,

it's that they may be in them.

"NXTHVN" is a project that started
about five years ago.

NXTHVN is a 40,000-square-foot
arts incubator

in the heart of the Dixwell neighborhood

in New Haven, Connecticut.

This is a predominantly
Black and Brown neighborhood.

It is a neighborhood that has
the history of jazz at every corner.

Our neighborhood, in many ways,
has been disinvested in.

Schools are struggling to really
prepare our population

for the futures ahead of them.

I know that creativity
is an essential asset.

It takes creativity

to be able to imagine a future

that is so different than the one
that is before you.

And so every artist in our program
has a high school studio assistant:

there's a high school student
that comes from the city of New Haven

who works with them
and learns their craft,

learns their practice.

And so we've seen the ways

in which pointing folks
at the power of creativity

can change them.

Beauty is complicated,

because of how we define it.

I think that beauty and truth

are intertwined somehow.

There is something

beautiful

in truth-telling.

That is:

that as an act, truth-telling

and the myriad ways it manifests --

there's beauty in that.