How I remember him

Painted in 2009, How I remember him is an urgent, incisive painting by Titus Kaphar. Rendered in sepia tones, the portrait seemingly hails from another age, only Kaphar has obscured his subject’s face with thick, viscous tar. The unconventional choice of material recalls the barbaric practice of coating an enslaved person’s wounds with hot tar at auction so that he or she would appear healthier to potential buyers. How I remember him is part of the Kaphar’s Vesper Project, a cycle of work based upon the lives of a family the artist invented. The fictitious 19th-century family consisted of Captain Abram Vesper, a former slave who reinvented himself as successful merchant, and his three daughters; all are able to pass as white in public. Striving to improve their social and financial standing, Captain Vesper tries to marry one of his daughters to the son of a white, wealthy shipping magnate. Ultimately, their racial secret is exposed, bringing ruin to the family. Broadly, Kaphar’s practice contends with notions of visibility, and he endeavours to bring to the fore what has been maligned, hidden, ignored, or brutalised. In the Vesper Project, Kaphar explores the ‘subconscious deceptions that our minds engage in on our behalf,’ a sense alluded to both in the title of the present work and the artist’s use of tar (T. Kaphar interviewed by A. Biswas, Studio International, 1 November 2017). By obscuring the face of his sitter, Kaphar has erased him from history and what remains is only memory.