© Jorge das Neves
© Jorge das Neves
© Jorge das Neves
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Darkroom Mirror (_2060950), 2017
Aperture (_2150280), 2018
Archival pigment print
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann; Zurich, Vielmetter, Los Angeles, and Document, Chicago
Paul Mpagi Sepuya is keenly interested in how portraiture (both historically and in terms of the discursive space it currently occupies) is an identity-building process, using it to make visible his black, queer gaze in a private game with the photographic camera.
Into his images, the artist convokes his friends, lovers and acquaintances to create illusions of intimacy, of reality
and of bodies, often invoking a homoerotic dimension,
but not allowing the viewer to build any narratives. He is
also not interested in an autobiographic dimension, despite the fact that most of his images are self-portraits.