Titus Kaphar, Analogous Colors, 2020, oil on canvas, TIME.
Kaphar’s Analogous Colors was a part of his 2020 exhibition “From a Tropical Space”. The intent of the exhibition was to deconstruct American history through representing the collective trauma of Black motherhood. Analogous Colors was selected as the cover for Time magazine’s June 2020 edition covering the murder of George Floyd. The image was accompanied by a poem by Kaphar including the line “one Black mother’s loss WILL be memorialized.”
Kaphar portrays Black motherhood as synonymous with loss and trauma in Analogous Colors. The mother clutching the empty shell of a child portrays the lack of ownership Black mothers have over their own children’s fate, expanding upon the lack of agency pregnant women already have over their body during pregnancy. The red border, which was added to the painting for the Time cover, honors the names of murdered Black men and women. While representation of pregnant Black women in art is sparse, Titus Kaphar addresses the inherent loss Black women experience in childbirth as the fate of their children lies in the hands of a deeply racist society that has ripped many Black mothers of their motherhood.
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