Clouds

Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to present clouds, Kenturah Davis’ debut solo exhibition in the UK. The drawing series that comprise this show are united by a common text—an essay penned by Davis that explores perception as an expressive and existential state. The artist’s writing flows through themes of dance, African diaspora, musical notation, literature, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and theoretical physics, invoking the guiding voices of the choreographer Katherine Dunham, composer Florence B. Price, theorist Saidiya Hartman, author Toni Morrison, and physicist Carlo Rovelli. Each of Davis’ bodies of work is a study in movement that translates photographs taken by the...

Kenturah Davis was born in 1980 in Los Angeles, California. She earned her BA from Occidental College in Los Angeles and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. She has had several notable solo exhibitions in recent years including ‘Dark Illumination’, Oxy Arts, Los Angeles, California (2023); ‘Apropos of Air’, Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2021); ‘(A)Float, (A)Fall, (A)Dance, (A)Death’, Jeffery Deitch Gallery, New York, New York (2021); ‘Everything that Cannot Be Known’, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia (2020); and ‘Blur in the Interest of Precision’, Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2019).

Her work is represented in numerous collections including the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; Brooklyn Museum, New York, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Perez Art Museum, Miami, Florida; Rubell Family Collection; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian, Washington D.C.; Studio Museum, New York, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

The artist is represented by Matthew Brown Gallery in Los Angeles. Kenturah Davis lives and works between Los Angeles, United States and Accra, Ghana.