Reframing History: Titus Kaphar on Art, Film, and Building Community with NXTHVN

Over the past two decades, Titus Kaphar has redefined how art can confront history, memory, and representation. His practice—spanning painting, installation, and now film—challenges entrenched narratives, often reframing historical figures and cultural iconography to reveal overlooked truths. 

Known for landmark projects like “The Jerome Project,” which examined the incarceration of Black men in America through devotional-style portraits, starting with his father and leading to other men with the same name, Kaphar continues to fuse the personal with the political, offering works that are profoundly intimate and honest. The result greets audiences with commanding depictions of Black figures and cultural icons in dialogue with art historical traditions. 

In 2022, Kaphar expanded beyond the canvas and made an the award-winning documentary named Shut Up and Paint. Last year, he doubled down on this medium by stepping into the world of feature film, debuting Exhibiting Forgiveness. The latter, available on Amazon and Hulu, is a semi-autobiographical story that follows a painter as he grapples with the legacy of his estranged father, interweaving memory, trauma, and reconciliation through both narrative and visual art. It was guided and created by a strong team of actors, producers, and mentors, including the one and only Steven Spielberg. 

Thereafter, a collection of Kaphar’s monumental paintings were featured in a solo exhibition at Gagosian in Beverly Hills under the same name as his film, “Exhibiting Forgiveness” (September 13–November 2, 2024), followed by a selection of works included in the mass exhibition “Count Me In” (August 17, 2024–April 27, 2025) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and in a group show earlier this year at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL. This summer in Aspen, Kaphar was also awarded the Anderson Ranch Art Center’s International Artist Award. Marking the organization’s 27th recipient, he was celebrated for his unforgettable contributions to contemporary art, which addresses critical social and cultural topics. 

Beyond the studio, Kaphar is deeply invested in shaping the next generation of artists. He is the co-founder of NXTHVN—a nonprofit arts incubator in New Haven, CT, that offers residencies, mentorship, and apprenticeships for emerging artists and curators, while also engaging local high school students. The 45,000-square-foot space has become a vital hub for community and creativity, reflecting Kaphar’s belief that imagination and opportunity can help transform lives.

Whitewall spoke with Kaphar about creating artwork rooted in lived experience, what it means to create art for himself while also building a platform for others, and what new medium he’s introducing to his practice next. 

In the Studio with Titus Kaphar

WHITEWALL: We first met ten years ago when you were presenting “The Jerome Project” at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Your work since has reconfigured subjects and regenerated their histories, addressing issues that many people want to overlook, like incarceration. What was the starting point for focusing on the themes in your work that you address now? What was the catalyst?

TITUS KAPHAR: Life experience. None of the things people think are the most political aspects of my work are rooted in me attempting to make a political statement. The majority of my approach is me wrestling with personal experience. “The Jerome Project” started with me searching my father’s name. That was my experience. I found myself in a situation where he and I had been estranged for 15 years, and all of a sudden, he was back. By that time, I had a wife and two kids and I didn’t know how to process him or how to make space for him in my life. When I am attempting to process things, the studio is often where I go and where that work happens. 

I had run into my father back home in Michigan after going to see my grandmother. I hadn’t seen him in a very long time. My wife and kids were there, and he wanted to talk, and I didn’t. That’s a whole story in itself. But long story short, when I got back home, I Googled my father. I don’t really know why. I guess it’s the kind of thing we do when we haven’t seen someone in a while—look them up to see what they’ve been up to. When I did, I found his mugshot, and I found 97 other men with the same names as my father and their mugshots. That first search tripped me out. I started painting those mugshots initially. That evolved, and it became more than that, but that’s really where it all started.

WW: Were you focusing on life experiences and historical references in school? Or did this really all actually start with this Google search and the resulting work that became “The Jerome Project”?  

TK: My first body of work of any real significance was a body of paintings called “Visual Quotations,” which doesn’t sound very personal. It was an art historical survey about the representation of Black people in Western painting, in 1999 or 2000. That project started because I had a professor who was teaching art history that decided to skip over the section of the art history book that spoke about Black people painting. Even that was initiated by a personal experience with a professor, and me attempting to work my way through something I was dealing with.

WW: It’s interesting to watch people take in your work for the first time, such as when I was at the Brooklyn Museum for the opening of “Giants.” Your work stirs something within people, and it seems to change the longer you sit with it.

TK: That evolves over time in your viewing. You first see it as one thing, and then as you sit with it, or someone tells you, you realize, “Wait, it’s more than that, actually.” 

WW: Do you intend for that to happen?

TK: Yes. First and foremost, I’m making work for myself, and trying to make myself excited about being in the studio. I love my time in the studio, and I figure that if I’m engaged and excited, then that’s enough. And I hope that other people are excited, as well.

WW: How does it feel to want to remain focused on making work for yourself in such a dynamic and evolving landscape in art right now? 

TK: It’s crazy! But it has more to do with the way that I learned to make art. I learned to make art this way, and I’ve continued to make this art this way. Actually, I’ve learned to make art from this place inside of myself—and that feels like such a gift to be to be able to do that. I haven’t found another way to work. Maybe eventually I will, but this feels very good right now. 

WW: How do you choose what medium to share your explorations through? You’ve explored many different materials in the past—from painting and installation to film. 

TK: This is part of the reason why it’s so important to be honest about where the work comes from—that internal space. I really try to be responsive to the guidance of the work. Sometimes you’re making a thing and it’s like, “This is the right idea, this is the wrong material.” 

It’s that idea that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If the only language I speak is the language of painting, then everything has to exist in the painting. That just means certain things are not going to be as articulate in that form. Certain things are best made as paintings, but others are not. For me, it’s about listening to the work, and when it feels like there’s a part of this I don’t understand or I don’t know, or the work is guiding me toward a new medium, at this point in my career, I’m very open to that. Learning new materials has been a fundamental part of my practice as we speak. 

Part of the reason we’re doing this on the phone is because I’m carving wood and have all these hammer and chisels everywhere. That’s something I’ve never done before, but it felt like this next body of work wanted that, so that’s where I am.

Titus Kaphar Explores Sculpture

WW: What are you working on that you felt needed to be seen in wood? How did you arrive at that? 

TK: This one was slightly different in that it was actually the process itself that was calling me. I went to Italy years ago, and when I was walking through the streets of Florence, I remember thinking, “Man, I feel like I’ve been here before.” I’m not really the person who believes in past lives and all of that stuff. At least I didn’t believe in it. But the more I walked around, the more I felt, “There’s something about this space that feels just way too familiar.” And that’s not an experience I’ve had before. I’ve been all over the world, and I haven’t had that experience before. I remember looking at a sculpture in particular. And as I was looking at the sculpture, I remember leaning in really, really close. As I was there, I was immediately hit by, “I know how to do this. I know how to carve.” That makes no sense, because I don’t, but I know that I do. I kind of avoided it for a long time. Then, at the beginning of this year, I decided I was going to let go of the fact that I don’t believe in any of these things and just move forward and see where it takes me. 

I picked up the hammer and chisel, and even more so than that experience, in front of that sculpture, it was, “I don’t know where this comes from, but I know how to do this.” There was a familiarity. It was more, “I’m not learning how to do something, I’m remembering how to do something.” 

WW: That must have felt comforting, but unusual. 

TK: It was trippy! Again, I don’t prescribe to that kind of thing in general. It’s not something I feel comfortable talking about because it feels like, “Man, you’re being ridiculous right now.” At the same time, there’s just so many cultures and traditions that do believe in past lives, carrying things from one life to the next, that it also feels arrogant to assume that there’s not something to it. So, in humility, I’m just following it and seeing what I get.

Behind the Scenes with Titus Kaphar

WW: Will we eventually get to see sculptures? What’s happening behind the scenes? What do we have in formation?

TK: Well, I’m also interested in this as a narrative. I’m apparently a filmmaker now because I made a film. I’m interested in not just the process of making sculpture, but I’m also interested in this narrative that is evolving. A narrative of this individual, this Black man, who goes to Italy, and has an experience in front of a sculpture and somehow knows—not feels, but knows—that he’s been there. Knows that in another time or another place he was a sculptor. That he made objects in this way. So, I’m making sculpture right now, literally as we speak. And it’s probably why I’m talking so slow. [Laughs] 

That narrative has me wondering what any of that means—that I think I was here before. Second of all, if I was a sculptor, what did I sculpt? What kinds of things did I make? Are the things that compel me and move me now, did they move me then? Is that something from that past, or something from the present? I don’t know, but one of the things that I find myself drawn to again and again is these sculptures of angels. I don’t know why, and it feels really silly to me, but that’s the thing that I’ve been drawn to. 

I can’t help but to think or at least speak to myself in these moments, like, “Hey, in the entire history of Western painting, there are, as far as I can recall, no representations of Black people as angelic or divine in that way.” What is an angel but a creature that is divine from God? I’m now, in this present moment, fascinated by that as an idea. I don’t know what that will manifest visually, but I’m in here making these little things and thinking…

WW: Getting in touch with your spiritual side? That probably feels interesting. Did you grow up in a spiritual household? 

TK: I grew up in spiritual tradition, but I also watched that spiritual tradition arm people. I think that’s part of the reason why I’m so resistant to it. I’m hesitant to allow myself to go back to that place. Not that it is wrong or bad on its own, but I just saw so much harm done that it’s hard to separate. 

WW: It seems that perhaps this is a bit of a second chance—giving yourself a second chance to re-engage with something in a different way?

TK: Yeah, I’m into that. I like that idea. 

Letting Ideas Lead

WW: Are you allowing yourself the opportunity to let these sculptures form as they go? More freestyle? Or do you have a sketch, and a structure for them?

TK: It’s at that nascent, private stage, I suppose. I’m drawing daily. I’m by myself and in museums, stuck in front of Italian Baroque paintings and sculptures and drawing them. I’m letting them lead to whatever they lead to. There’s no show that I’m working toward, per se. I’m just following the inclination and really enjoying the process. Hell, this work may never be seen. [Laughs] I might finish it and be like, “Yeah, that was a really important process, but the product itself was just for me.” That happens, as well. 

WW: And if anything, it could be a piece for you and your family.

TK: There are definitely pieces that I’ve made that are family pieces that are just ours that are in my house. That’s what they’re for. Sometimes those are works that have been seen in the world, but they’re not for the market in that same kind of way. What the market values and what the market sees as important, valuable, or beautiful are, you know, what the market values. It’s not necessarily what these particular works that I’m referring to are. I don’t know that the market would value them and that’s not the point. 

WW: This goes back to our earlier conversation about what it feels like to make art in the moment we’re in now—when you’re making something for yourself, regardless of what the art market tells you you should be making or who you should be making it for.

TK: This is important. Through NXTHVN, the not-for-profit that I started, I’ve had this wonderful opportunity to work with young people—lots of young artists. One of the things that I want them to understand is, “You have something important to say to the world. That’s why you’re here. There’s something that you specifically have to say that is likely unlike what anyone else has to say. It may take your entire career to get to that, but you won’t get to that if you are not listening to or allowing that work to come from the inside or inside. If the work is coming from outside, it’s going to be hard for that work to actually be the thing that you have uniquely to say to the world.” 

I don’t really know how else to make work. Furthermore, I think the world and the most interesting collectors are excited to hear from the makers. What do these makers have to say about this moment? This political landscape? About beauty? About joy? Throughout time, artists and writers and poets help add to that conversation—add unique things, unique sentences to it. If we make stuff because the market says to make it, I don’t know if we end up at the same destination. 

Not to make this esoteric, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the most beautiful work either, right? Because you listen to your inner voice doesn’t mean that therefore your work is more beautiful than somebody else’s work. I’m not saying that. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. We can sit down and have about that after the fact. I’m just talking about the process—and getting to a place where you are capable of making that thing for you that comes from inside. That it can potentially, at some point, be a gift to the world that you are part of.

And the market is constantly changing. What the market is interested in today is not what they’re interested in tomorrow. We have a great example of that with what happened with Black figurative painting. We had Kerry James Marshall have an amazing auction, and that was really the big shift in people’s interest in Black figurative painting—more interest than there had ever been in the history of Western painting. Some people still are there, and some people are still trying to figure out what the next thing is. So, just make the thing. Make the thing that you want to be making. At the very least, that will make you bring you joy.

WW: How are you thinking about what’a happening in the world today? How it’s informing what you feel compelled to make?

TK: Are you ready for me to completely contradict myself? [Laughs] I was realizing that a lot of my work, even though it’s personal, has a political interpretation that can be taken from it. I’m not blind. I can recognize that. I’m very, very aware of that. I found myself after many years of making this work the way that I make the work, asking myself what my work looks like if it’s just from a place of joy. It still comes from this internal space, but if it’s just about the joy, not necessarily about the struggle or the tragedy… I was excited about that idea, that exploration. And then, elections! I felt like there’s definitely time for that and I have to figure out if that’s what’s coming from inside. That’s what I need to be doing right now. But there’s also a really important space for work that resists, work that protests—and remembering that art has been a part of almost every revolution in history in some way or another. I’m wondering if this is in fact the moment for those paintings of resistance, those paintings of protest. 

WW: How will you know when it’s time to make that work? Is it a decision that you make or is it intuitive? 

TK: I mean, right now, I’m watching the same news everybody else is watching. And as a person who has a minor in American history, and deeply interested in American history and American politics, I’m seeing and feeling everything everybody else is feeling. I don’t know when it will be time. I really don’t know. But I’m probably pretty close. Maybe in fact that’s what this is all about. Maybe that’s what this work will ultimately lead to, and I won’t know it until until further in the journey. That’s the other part of this—that you’re only given a piece of the answer, and you won’t be given that second clue until you make those first works. And then after you make those first works, you find answers, and those lead you to other works, which lead you to other answers. 

WW: You’re intuitively breadcrumbing yourself? 

TK: Exactly! Exactly. 

WW: And you’re giving the decision-making up to somebody else, ultimately. 

TK: Yes, and somebody who may or may not carry the same values, morals, principles as you. I’m not saying that it’s bad to sell your work. It’s how I pay my bills and put my kids through school. I’m just saying that the other process that we’re talking about—one wherein you give away your autonomy and authorship as an artist and put it in the hands of a market to determine what is the right thing to make—sounds like a really interesting project in itself. What is the work that’s made when it is just developed by the market? That’s a whole artistic project. Somebody’s done that, or is creating an AI program to figure that out, but that’s just not my work. 

WW: Let’s talk about your work—outside of the studio, at your nonprofit, NXTHVN. Can you share more about its programming and how it supports emerging names? 

TK: NXTHVN brings me so much joy. Sometimes, you get to a certain place in your career, and it feel like, “What are we doing here? Why am I doing this?” But I don’t ever have that question when I’m engaged working with the young people I work with. NXTHVN is a not-for-profit, 45,000-square-foot arts accelerator in the heart of a historically Black neighborhood named Dixwell in New Haven, Connecticut. We provide studio space, money, housing, community, and apprenticeship for artists. Every year, we select seven artists and two curators to participate in the program. We give them a stipend, housing, and a curriculum that’s based on the business of art so that they can have some understanding of the world that they’re about to go into and how to protect themselves and engage in that marketplace so they’re not naive in so many ways that I was.

On top of that, each artist works with a high school student from the area, and those high school students are apprentices that are building their own portfolios while assisting these artists in their studios. And the high school students get paid to do that. 

WW: How does working with young and emerging artists in this way help you shape your own perspective of art and community and the importance of one on the other?

TK: So many of the things we just talked about are very insular. Talking about me, what I feel, modeling the work… It can feel a bit like navel-gazing at times. The work that we do at NXTHVN is not that. We are engaged in working with young people—and not because I’m interested in them becoming artists. I tell parents all the time that if they become an artist, that’s wonderful, but that’s not what the goal is. The goal is to spark creativity and the power of imagination. When you grow up in neighborhoods like I grew up in, or in the community that we worked in, for a lot of young people, there are not a lot of examples of success. There are a lot of examples of struggle, there’s some examples of love, and so on and so forth, but sometimes there’s not examples of success. That was definitely my circumstance. 

In situations like that, I tell people, ”If your father was a doctor and you became a doctor, that takes hard work and dedication, but it doesn’t take imagination or creativity. But if your father was a drug addict and you become anything else positive, that is the level of creativity and imagination that is hard for some people to conceive of if they’ve never experienced the kinds of traumas that that we’ve experienced.” It is not an easy thing for a young person to go from a home where drugs and abuse are common to move on and do something different. But imagination is one tool in the process to help them achieve those things—to be able to imagine a reality that looks fundamentally different from anything that they’ve experienced in their day to day life. And that’s what we support. 

WW: Each year, you mentioned you have seven artists and two curators. Can you tell us about the culminating show, “The Things Left Unsaid,” this summer? 

TK: We have a show at the end of the year that the curators curate, and this year, it’s at James Cohan Gallery. It’s usually at a commercial gallery in New York—and a specific kind of commercial gallery. A high-level gallery, but a gallery that has a reputation of being committed to their artists. A gallery that has a reputation of success, for sure, but knows how to inspire and build careers. In some cases, our artists have been offered exhibition opportunities with those galleries. In other cases, they help us out. It’s been a really beautiful process. 

WW: You’re the type of creator that if he doesn’t find a medium that feels appropriate for the  topic, you’re just going to create a new one. Was that how you felt with filmmaking when making Exhibiting Forgiveness?

TK: In some ways, it’s just my own ignorance, my own naivety. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. [Laughs] It’s those breadcrumbs that we talked about—you follow them one by one. And by the time you’re done, you’re like, “Wait, you mean we’re gonna make a movie? Okay. Alright. I’m up for that. We can do that.” And that’s kind of how things happen. 

But I started this by writing. I was spending a whole lot of time writing to my sons. This all comes back to “The Jerome Project”—that moment where we were in Michigan visiting my grandmother, and my father was there. My kids were with me, and that was the first time they’d seen him. They were very young, maybe five and three. From then on, there were questions from them about me and my relationship with my father, like “Did you guys do this or that together? What was it like? Did you go to your games?” All that stuff.

My answer was generally, “I’ll tell you more when you’re older.” And, well, my oldest is now going off to college next year, so it like it felt like time. So, it started with writing these memories of my experiences growing up. It really just became this kind of memoir—the series of letters to my sons. And then I shared it with someone, and it was his encouragement that really helped me realize it could be more than that. Then, it took on this very thin veil of fiction and worked with some extraordinary producers to help me bring the whole thing to life.

WW: Did that all make sense to you then? Or were you puzzled, with ideas and intentions and stories swirling around in your brain and on paper? 

TK: The problem is that my artistic practice is one where I welcome the unknown. I welcome being in the space of fear, and I try and push into it. Generally, it’s generative. It surprises me, even when it’s not generative. And that for me is the exciting part of my practice. I often get to that place and say, “I’m afraid,” but that doesn’t generate the “flight” response. At this stage of the game, it generates the “create” response. 

It’s a very, very interesting experience. I had the really wonderful opportunity to work with Steven Spielberg as kind of a mentor for me on this project. One of the things that he said to me after having read the script is, “I think you’ve got something special here Titus, but I want you to know, number one is that the movie’s not gonna fix everything. And number two, Hollywood doesn’t always know how to deal with these kinds of stories. But it’s important work to be done.” He and Kate Capshaw have been very big supporters of mine throughout this whole process. They were actually involved way before because I had a crazy experience where Kate came to my studio—and Kate and Steven are supporters of NXTHVN—and we were both just geeking out because we’re both painters. We were talking about painting stuff, and she asked what I was working on.

I told her that they were paintings I made for a film and a script that I wrote. I didn’t know what she would do, but I had a script on my table, and I said, “Check it out.” I really didn’t think she would check it out—maybe 20 years later, she’d see this thing on her desk, pick it up, and start reading—but in fact she went home and read it pretty quick. She said, “Hey, this is beautiful. Can I share it with Steven?” And I said, “Steven who? There are a lot of Stevens in the world.” [Laughs] Very quickly, he read it, and she got back to me saying he wanted to speak with me. That was the beginning. So, while I was on set, at the end of several hard days, I’d call Steven and he’d walk me through it. He had just finished The Fabelmans, a film about his own family and struggle. So, even from before we started shooting, they were involved. It was pretty magical. 

WW: Do you think you’ll produce another film?

TK: I do. 

WW: So you enjoyed the process?

TK: Nobody said that! [Laughs] There are definitely aspects of it that I liked—like working with the actors. I learned so much from them. It was beautiful to work with artists, and that was really special. But the part of getting the film into the world, distribution, Hollywood, award seasons, campaigns and the extraordinary cost of it all? I wouldn’t say I loved all of that stuff. But working with the people I worked with—like producers Stephanie Allain, Derek Cianfrance, and Jamie Patricof—that was amazing. They helped me through. It’s not lost on me that this particular first film doesn’t necessarily feel like a first time film, and I’m proud of that, but that comes from the incredible collaborators I was working with.