Excerpt of Contingency - Angela Davis II (Dominique)

Artist: Davis, Kenturah b. 1980

Date: 2023

Medium: Pencil on paper

Artwork Dimensions: 20 x 20 in.

County Department: Public Defender

Artwork Site: Hall of Records - Office of the Public Defender

Supervisorial District: 1

Current Status: On view

About the Artwork: Through a collage of texts arranged from the writings of political activist and philosopher Angela Davis, choreographer/ anthropologist Katherine Dunham, and logician Jonathan Chimakonam, the artist suggests the possibility of reconfiguring how we conceive of freedom to consider how language shapes our experience of the world, and how we create the texture of our society through our laws. In keeping with her practice, Davis invited three Black women working for the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office to be photographed. A composition of photographs of Deputy Public Defender Dominique Brown was ultimately selected to be translated into a drawing on paper rubbed with carbon pigment over the essay. In this, the artist blurs the personal and the political, stating that the implications of language are activated through our bodies. Viewers can experience multiple dynamics of the artwork: from afar, it presents a gestural movement of the Black female figure; up close, it reveals the subtlety of the text. Together, these ideas can evoke other possibilities in our pursuit of justice and liberation.

About the Artist: Kenturah Davis is an artist working between Los Angeles and Accra (Ghana). Her work oscillates between various facets of portraiture and design. Using text as a point of departure, she explores the fundamental role that language has in shaping how we understand ourselves and the world around us. This manifests in a variety of forms including drawings, textiles, sculpture and performances. Her work has been included in institutional exhibitions in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. Davis earned her BA from Occidental College and MFA Yale University School of Art.