PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA (1982 - )
Untitled (Desktop, April 2023). Digital C-print, 152x127 mm; 6x5 inches. 2010.This work from Paul Mpagi Sepuya was issued in Studio Work (Familiar), 2012 after he completed after finishing the Artist-in-Residence program at The Studio Museum in Harlem. The artist writes about his works: “I am exploring how the studio environment, as the site of creation, editing, and accumulation affects and frames portraiture, and the performance of portraiture.”Born in San Bernardino, California, Paul Mpafi Sepuya received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2004 and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles 2016. Known as a postmodern portrait photographer, he challenges traditional portraiture by filtering it through the black queer gaze and involving his queer community. Sepuya's body of work highlights the constructed nature of the photograph and the performative space of the studio, embracing the medium’s potentials for fragmentation and connection.His work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 2015; Artist Institute, Hunter College, City University of New York, 2016; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2016; New Museum, New York, 2017; Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2018; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018; and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2018. Sepuya was awarded the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Los Angeles Emerging Artist Grant in 2017. Sepuya lives and works in Los Angeles.Sepuya, p. 161.