Join Senior Critic, Dexter Wimberly in conversation with artist, Kenturah Davis as they explore resilience and perseverance in building a strong artistic career. Davis, who earned her MFA from Yale University School of Art and works between Los Angeles, New Haven, and Accra, Ghana, creates portraiture using text as a point of departure to explore language’s fundamental role in shaping identity. The discussion takes on particular poignancy as Davis lost her Altadena home in the January 2025 Eaton Fire, yet has expressed her determination to rebuild. Through her journey—from creating major public commissions to navigating profound loss—Davis exemplifies the resilience essential to sustaining an artistic practice through both triumph and adversity.
Kenturah Davis (b. 1980) lives and works in Altadena, California. The artist earned her BA from Occidental College and MFA from Yale University School of Art.
Recent solo exhibitions include clouds, Stephen Friedman, London, UK
(2024); apropos of air, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2021); (a)Float, (a)Fall, (a)Dance,(a)Death, Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2021); Everything That Cannot Be Known, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art (2020); Kenturah Davis + Desmond Lewis, Crosstown Arts in coordination with Seed Space, Memphis (2019); Blur in the Interest of Precision, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2019).
Recent institutional exhibitions include Ode to ’Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena, California African American Museum (2025), Dark Illumination, Oxy Arts (2023); California Biennial 2022, organized by Elizabeth Armstrong and Essence Harden, Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa (2022); Our House: Selections from MOCA’s Collection, organized by Bennett Simpson and Mia Locks, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2022); Currents and Constellations, curated by Kee Jo Lee, Cleveland Museum of Art (2022); Black American Portraits, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (2022).
The Los Angeles Metro Rail commissioned a large-scale, site-specific work by Davis that is now permanently installed on the new Crenshaw/LAX, K Line station. The artist was an inaugural artist fellow at NXTHVN in New Haven (2019), founded by Titus Kaphar and Jonathan Brand and a DAMLI fellow at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2018). Davis was the 2022/23 Wanlass Artist in Residence at Occidental College, and an inaugural cohort for Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab by Theaster Gates and Prada.
Dexter Wimberly is an American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions at institutions and galleries around the world including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, North Carolina; KOKI ARTS in Tokyo, Japan; BODE in Berlin, Germany; Lehmann Maupin in London, U.K.; SECCI in Milan, Italy; and Efie Gallery in Dubai, UAE. His exhibitions have been reviewed in The New York Times and Artforum, and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Wimberly is a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art, and the founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan.