Video: Titus Kafar: an attempt at rethinking history
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
History does not know the subjunctive mood, it cannot be rewritten or changed. But the assessment of historical events changes quite often: loud victories are declared defeats, and former heroes turn into enemies. It all depends on whose eyes we look at the historical picture: winners or losers. Artist Titus Kaphar in his sculptural paintings from the History in the Making series challenges the canonical notions of history and memory, destroying the past in the present.
In his work, Titus Kafar balances between the real story and its fictional presentation. His works make the viewer, first of all, think and try to look at well-known facts and events with different eyes. To implement this idea, the author took reproductions of paintings by European and American authors of the 18-19 centuries: Thomas Ickens, Eugene Delacroix, John Copley and others. These works became the personification of the prevailing notion of history in society. And then it was time to break stereotypes and alternatives: Titus "changes history" by cutting, displacing, squeezing, painting over parts of reproductions.
In principle, the idea of connecting two-dimensional surfaces with three-dimensional relief is not new, as is the idea of interfering with the plot of an image. However, the work of Titus Kafar is notable for the fact that he creates new historiographic artifacts, built on the material remains and inconsistencies of the past. In a sense, these works anticipate historical facts that are yet to be discovered, or, on the contrary, the secret of which will never be revealed.
Titus Kafar is not simply opposed to modern understanding of history. His work is more than just a demonstration of historical inconsistencies or racial injustice. History in the Making is not just a request for a more accurate and “truthful” construction of history. This is a statement that there is always room for mistakes in history, but at the same time, it is the consciousness of these mistakes that makes it possible to restore and rethink it.
The artist was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo (Michigan). Graduated from Yale University and San Jose State University. He currently resides in New Haven, Connecticut.
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