Contending with Contingency III

Kenturah Davis American

Not on view

The nine sheets of paper that make up this monumental drawing’s support are embossed with transcripts of the U.S. Senate’s 1864 debate around the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which eventually served to enshrine the abolition of slavery first augured by President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Over these impressed words, the artist drew the portrait of a choreographer in mid-movement, the dancer’s dynamic gesture captured in deep gray pencil. Where her body intersects with the text, the words are legible. For Davis, the congruence of poetry and the figure underscores how freedom itself can be bounded by law and language.

Contending with Contingency III, Kenturah Davis (American, born Los Angeles, 1984), Carbon pencil over debossed text with graphite on wove paper, in nine parts

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Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York. Photo by Genevieve Hanson.

Contending with Contingency III, Kenturah Davis (American, born Los Angeles, 1984), Carbon pencil over debossed text with graphite on wove paper, in nine parts
Contending with Contingency III, Kenturah Davis (American, born Los Angeles, 1984), Carbon pencil over debossed text with graphite on wove paper, in nine parts

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