Art Fact Friday #38 Karon Davis

William Mandela Matthews
Apr 19, 2024
3 min read

An American sculptor and multimedia artist who installations magnify matters of the history of race and violence in the United States. By using a variety of materials including plaster, chicken wire, glass, and readymade objects, the artist creates emotional living paintings with protagonists that are historical and imagined. The artist creates human figures through an original technique to create life-size casts of friends, family and self. The use of these medias connects to ancient Egyptian mummification practices of wrapping bodies to preserve their intricate pasts.

This artist’s works have been exhibited at many institutions and galleries including the Hammer Museum, University of California, Salon 94, Jeffrey Deitch; Wilding Cran Gallery and The Underground Museum, Los Angeles. Notable group exhibitions including the artist have been shown at LACMA, Los Angeles, Jack Shainman Gallery, The School Kinderhook, Prospect New Orleans, USC Fisher Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Atkinson Gallery at SBCC, Taubman Museum of Art and The Frye Museum.

Born 1977 in Reno, Nevada; Karon Davis admired the performing arts as the child of a professional dancer and a Broadway performer; Nancy Bruner and Ben Vereen, Davis.

Davis took lessons at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company and entered the theater department at Spelman College. She graduated with a degree in film in 2001 from the University of Southern California's Cinematic Arts department.

In 2012, Davis co-founded the Underground Museum in Arlington Heights, Los Angeles, California. In 2015 she presented her first institutional show "Sculptures & Photographs" for the museum. The museum Served as a meeting/ exhibition space for Black visual and performance artist. Notable artists include Kahlil Joseph, Arthur Jafa, and Deana Lawson. Musical artist John Legend and Solange Knowles have also released albums at the museum. In 2016, Karon Davis presented the solo show "Karon Davis: Pain Management" at Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles. In 2017 Davis received The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant. Davis's Mary created in 2016 for the Pain Management series, was included in the contemporary arts triennial in New Orleans, Louisiana 2021.

In 2021, Davis revealed the installation "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York. The art piece pays homage to Bobby Seale and the Black Panther Party. The installation was acquired by the Pérez Art Museum Miami; Bobby Seale and The People's Free Food Program created between 2020–21, features a cast of Seale is placed amongst bags of golden food placed on the floor. The Underground Museum closed in March 2022 after ten years of operations. Davis’s exhibition Beauty Must Sufferopened at New York's Salon 94 in 2023. The Hammer Museum exhibited Karon Davis: Selection from the Hammer Contemporary Collection in 2023. Her High Line Park commission titled Curtain Call, was unveiled the same year and runs through 2024.

Davis is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Rubell Museum, Miami and the Brooklyn Museum, New York. Karon Davis currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California and New York, New York. Her most recent solo exhibitions have been featured at institutions and galleries including the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, California in 2023; Salon 94, New York, New York in 2023.

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