“One: Titus Kaphar”

A 2017 TED talk by the artist provided the impetus for this work, which began as a copy of a 17th century group portrait of a wealthy Dutch family that included their servant: A young African boy. Kaphar essentially defaced the painting onstage, whitewashing everyone in the scene except for the boy with the effect of redirecting the viewers attention to him—reclaiming, as it were, his place in an historical narrative that otherwise ignored him.