Starting on November 25, 2022, French artist Alix Marie and U.S. photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya will present two artistic positions at PHOXXI, the Temporary House of Photography at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, that use a variety of artistic methods to explore the human body, origin, and gender.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982, San Bernardino, CA) is an artist working in photography whose projects weave together histories and possibilities of portraiture, queer and homoerotic networks of production and collaboration, and the material and conceptual potential of blackness at the heart of the medium. Techniques of collage, layering, fragmentation, mirror imagery explore the complex nature of photographic production while relocating the relationships between artist and portrayed to the center of art making.
From early photographs set in his bedroom to ongoing series of work grounded in the photographer’s studio Sepuya calls into question the very essence of a studio space, expanding the definition of what this space has been as well as what it can be. Conceptual and aesthetic devices from 19th century studio photography, are reinvented to confront contemporary issues in portraiture. For his upcoming exhibition at PHOXXI/Deichtorhallen, Sepuya will be debuting new work for the first time from a series-in-progress titled Daylight Studio / Dark Room Studio.
Sepuya received a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2004, and an MFA in photography from UCLA in 2016. He is Associate Professor in Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego.