Felandus Thames American, b. 1974

Overview
Untitled, 2022
Untitled, 2022

“ I am interested in creating vessels able to contain beauty and trauma at an equilibrium. Work that functions in the way that Black music is endowed by, but not the sum of, Black joy, pain, and suffering. I am invested in the residue of memory decoupled from nostalgia or narrative. Material choices, never superficial, become central actors in my practice and often function as surrogates to contested histories and lived experiences of those who consume them. Materials are the repository of history and memory in my practice.”

 

- Felandus Thames

Felandus Thames focuses on the relationship to the ready-made, and how materials can become surrogates for their user’s ethnology and gender.
Works
Untitled, 2022
Biography
Felandus Thames
Felandus Thames

“Materials are the repository of history and memory in my practice. My work attempts to transcend didacticisms that are typically associated with anachronistic understandings of representation and  instead aligns itself with ideas around the taxonomy of human difference. I am also interested in  the interplay between the personal narrative and the imagined. I use humor, increasingly important  to the work, as it allows the viewer to ease into disconcerting motifs.

 

Thame's proclamation and hope is that his art will continue a life beyond that of his initial intent. The work, often probing and  unsettling, poses questions rather than answers them. It shifts the beholder’s role from voyeur to  participant, and complicates his personal relationship to the work.

 

Recent group exhibitions include “Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century” at the Kalamazoo  Institute of Arts and “Resistance in Black and White” at the Cleveland Museum of Art. His work was  curated in the 2022 Venice Biennial exhibition “The Afro-Futurist  Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined” for the European Cultural Counsel.

Exhibitions
News
Enquire

Send me more information on Felandus Thames

Please fill in the fields marked with an asterisk

* denotes required fields

In order to respond to your enquiry, we will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy (available on request). You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.