This lecture is co-hosted with the Africana Studies program at Bard College.
Through the Speaker Series, CCS Bard brings distinguished artists, scholars, and curators to campus to present on their work. Speaker Series talks are held within Classroom 102 at CCS Bard, unless otherwise noted. All talks are free and open to the public.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982, San Bernardino, CA) lives and works in Los Angeles, where he received an MFA in photography at UCLA in 2016. From 2000 - 2014 Sepuya resided in New York City, receiving a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2004. Sepuya became known for his 2005 - 2007 zine series “SHOOT” and first monograph, “Beloved Object & Amorous Subject, Revisited” (2008), along with contributions and features in BUTT Magazine, and participation and collaborations in the re-emergence of queer zines culture of the 2000s. He went on to participate in Artist-in-Residence programs at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Fire Island Artist Residency.
Sepuya’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the International Center for Photography, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum, among others. Solo exhibitions include Double Enclosure at Fotomuseum Amsterdam (2018), Dark Room at Document, Chicago (2018) and Dark Room at team (bungalow), Los Angeles and Figures, Grounds and Studies at Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City (both 2017). Sepuya was recently featured in Being : New Photography 2018 at the Museum of Modern Art and Trigger at the New Museum New York City (2018). His first museum survey of work from 2006 - 2018 will open May 2019 at CAM St Louis.
Sepuya’s work has been covered and published in ARTFORUM, Aperture, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Art Review, Frieze, Art in America, Monocle, Osmos, The Nation, and he is a recipient of the 2017 Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s grant for Los Angeles artists.