Paul Mpagi Sepuya discusses mirrors, darkrooms, and the queer black body

‘It is about my attempt to situate queerness and blackness as starting points for looking at the medium,’ he says

A slew of recent exhibitions have put Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s name on everyone’s lips. The Angeleno artist re-examines portrait photography’s formal and conceptual foundations, as well as its traditional tools: mirrors, black velvet, and darkrooms. Questions around the representation of the black and the queer body – be it his own or his friends’ and collaborators’ – also inform Sepuya’s sensitive and intimate body of work. He welcomed Art Basel in his Boyle Heights studio.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya is represented by  Document (Chicago), Vielmetter Los Angeles, Galerie Peter Kilchmann (Zurich, Paris), and Bortolami (New York). His solo exhibition 'Exposure' will open at Nottingham Contemporary on January 27 and run until May 5, 2024. 

Camera and edit: Gillian Garcia
Production: Coline Milliard and Jeanne-Salomé Rochat for Art Basel 

Originally published in February 2020. 



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