Paul Mpagi Sepuya is a photographer whose works incorporate several elements, including history, literary modernism and queer collaboration. The art of Sepuya—who is also an associate professor in visual arts at the University of California-San Diego—is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOCA Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum, among other venues.
The in-demand, Los Angeles-based artist will be in Chicago for two events. On April 12, 5-8 p.m., the exhibition space DOCUMENT, 1709 W. Chicago Ave., will present an opening reception for Sepuya's latest show, Infinite Like Night, which runs through June 1. And on April 13, at 5:15 p.m., he will be part of a conversation at the annual arts event EXPO Chicago at Navy Pier, discussing the monograph Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Darkroom A to Z, slated for release this fall.
NOTE: This conversation was edited for clarity and length.
Windy City Times: When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
Paul Mpagi Sepuya: I think … always. There isn't an "event" kind of answer. It was sort of a gradual process of understanding and transforming initial interest into a more focused view on exploration. I studied photography in undergrad and was involved in photography before that. I've been honest with regard with those initial impulses and drives.
WCT: For our readers, please talk about the conceptualization and process involving Blue Studio [which Infinite Like Night explores].
Sepuya: It's my first time showing this work but I do want there to be a connection to the thinking about the color blue and the conditions of blue light. The title is taken from Bruce Nugent's short story "Smoke, Lilies and Jade." The character, Alex, walks through these social spaces and through dreams, and there's this blue light.
The project that was right before this—Daylight Studio/Dark Room Studio—was conceived at about the same time as this, and it involves photographing in red light. I've been photographing [for these projects] since about 2010 but there have been these observations [involving] artificial lights at night that are [connected] to celebratory and ecstatic experiences, like bars and clubs. The blue light provides an organic association with nightlife but there's also blue material, as in the explicit and illicit.
Where color comes in is through collages [that I've done] that bring in these observations of the images that we see. There are three lights in the studio, with the lights transforming the entire space, which I photograph. And then there are a couple images made in daylight, and murals that are, like, day to night and back again. [Note: A press release stated one of the dye-sublimation prints, Gazing Ball, features "three figures behind a mirrored sphere on the edge of a pedestal. The gazing ball holds a distorted view of Sepuya's studio and a trace of natural light—at dusk—peering through the skylight."]
I had found blue very difficult to work with in the past. There are a couple photographs taken in 2016; the palette is one of skin tone, heavy black (and sometimes brown) velvet, the concrete of the floor. Working with red before and now with blue is like a shock visually. I wanted to show something new as I figure out this color.
WCT: And there are queer themes in your work.
Sepuya: Yes. It's in all the works that I've talked about, like the way in which the photography and images are tied to individual queer experiences and formations of understanding desire, entanglement and things like that. And like with Dark Room Studio, that [motif] extends to the black and white of the darkroom and the red light of the back rooms of clubs. The blue is tied to "Smoke, Lilies and Jade," which I believe is the first queer writing by a Black American author; it's from 1926.
I want [queerness] to be separable but also a part of my work. I'm thinking about these multiple bodies, spaces, compositions and themes, like friendship, collaboration and play—all mixed together.
WCT: As you look at how your art has changed over the years, do you see where your art is headed?
Sepuya: I do. I've been thinking a lot about that. There are a lot of references in this latest work to the 19th-century studio. That's what I've been doing from 2021 to 2023. My work has been about various aspects of the studio for about 20 years now, but the aesthetic has become more dominant. I'm continuing thinking but the changes are almost incremental. There are a few remnants of the 19th-century references but [the work] is moving toward some more contemporary references. You'll also see gazing balls in these photographs; I'll continue to introduce those, providing a whole history about spatial optics. They connect images that I took from 2017 to 2020 to histories and optics, bringing it all together.
WCT: I'll ask you something I've asked several other people over the past year: What is it like to be part of the queer community in today's America?
Sepuya: Oh—that's a good question. I would say that it means showing up for everyone else in solidarity.
When I think about it, it's like being a queer, gay presence whether it's housing rights, stopping the genocide in Gaza, workers' rights, prison abolition or something else. You can't just have mainstreaming of issues and saying, "Oh, queer people can do that, too." It has to be about realizing that everything is in solidarity.
For more about the international art fair EXPO Chicago, visit www.expochicago.com . Information about Sepuya and his works are at www.paulsepuya.com/ .
