Karon Davis

Karon Davis (b. 1977, Reno, Nevada) creates sculptures and multimedia installations that touch on issues of history, race, and violence in the United States, using materials as varied as plaster strips, chicken wire, glass, and readymade objects. Drawing on her background in theater and film, Davis creates haunting tableaux inhabited by protagonists both historical and imagined. The figures are created using the artist’s unique plaster method, amalgamations of life-size casts taken from friends and family as well as her own body. The material reflects her longtime interest in ancient Egyptian mummification practices, using wrapping to memorialize different bodies and their complex histories.

In Fall 2024 the artist will be included in a number of significant group exhibitions, including Edges of Ailey, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Movements Toward Freedom, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project, The California African American Museum, Los Angeles; and American Vignettes: Symbols, Society, and Satire, at the Rubell Museum, Washington, D.C. The artist’s work was previously the subject of Karon Davis: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles in 2023. She was also commissioned by The High Line, New York, to create a monumental bowing ballerina in bronze, Curtain Call, which is on view December 2023 through November 2024.

Davis’ work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (CA); the Pérez Art Museum, Miami (FL); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (TX); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (CA); the Rubell Museum, Miami (FL); the Brooklyn Museum (NY), and MAC3, Los Angeles (CA) among others. In 2017 Davis was the recipient of The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant.

Portrait of Karon Davis. Photo by Elon Schoenholz. Image courtesy the artist and Salon 94.