King David

King David is an abstract artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Flatbush to immigrant parents from the Caribbean, his unique upbringing was heavily influenced by his completion of a program called Prep for Prep. This nonprofit afforded him scholarship opportunities to attend The Dalton School and Gettysburg College, where he graduated as a Studio Art major with honors. This scholarly achievement would also lead David to the doors of the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing in France, where he studied for a semester abroad. After the experience of losing his father to suicide in 2016, David found his voice and expressive style in abstract painting, and has been committed to working in this fashion ever since, supplementing his focus on abstraction with similarly conceived drawings, watercolors, sculptures, and photographs. He works out of his Brooklyn studio and has exhibited independently at various art fairs and galleries.

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YVENA DESPAGNE: Growing up in Brooklyn with Jamaican and Trinidadian heritage, how did your cultural background influence your early perceptions of art and identity?

KING DAVID: My parents are the background of my artistic identity, culturally speaking. Growing up, I had an intrinsic love of my culture, imbued in me from my parents' natural expression of their heritage. The food, music, and colors associated with my Trini and Jamaican backgrounds constantly serve as reference points for my visual work because they activate the senses in an all-encompassing way. I always knew that Art about my culture was what I wanted to be making. Still, it took time and learning for me to learn how to use the tools at my disposal to make Art that is the most homage to the complexity of my cultural identity.

YD: Can you share any pivotal moments from your childhood or adolescence that steered you toward a career in abstract art?

KD: My earliest trips going back to Jamaica from younger than 2 years old hugely influenced my overall sense of Art, tending towards abstraction. The things I remember most from those trips include animals, nature, sounds, tastes, and experiences that can't be summed up in something as simple as a picture. I love photography, but it's only a starting point before delving deeper into the loose nature of things and how they're connected, which abstract work speaks to more honestly. I had a similarly formative experience when I visited Trinidad & Tobago for the first time in 2023.

YD: Which artists or cultural movements have significantly influenced your artistic development, and in what ways have they shaped your creative process?

KD: Impressionism is a force that constantly influences my work, owing to my time spent studying in its birthplace, learning from the masterworks and motifs of Cezanne, Monet, Van Gogh, and the like. Of course, abstract expressionism is something that I constantly refer to. That said, I make it a point to look at everything because everything influences everything. No medium exists in a vacuum, so they're all worth looking at and learning about, from the most ancient cave paintings made thousands of years ago to the most contemporary street art you can think of, scribbled on the side of some decrepit building in New York City.

YD: Your work spans various mediums, including oil painting, sculpture, and textiles. How do you decide which medium best conveys a particular concept or emotion?

KD: I find myself returning to a familiar quote, "the method must meet the concept. From there, the visuals will emerge." That's how I present my working philosophy in the simplest way possible. And it just so happens that, more often than not, the methods I undertake produce visuals that emerge as abstract transmutations of paint and light. In these works, I investigate the chemical and physical characteristics that define paint, color, and our experiences of the qualities therein. When I approach any other medium, I apply the same philosophy to the material context presented before me, whether photographs of my beloved Caribbean Homelands or custom textiles sourced from sustainably minded manufacturers. I once asked one of my favorite educators from my time studying in the South of France, Josh Gasparach, about his favorite medium: drawing, painting, or sculpture. He told me they were all the same and that I would understand exactly what he meant in time. I'd say I do now more than ever.

YD: In your exhibition Jamaica at 447 SPACE, you delve into themes of memory and heritage. Could you discuss the inspiration behind this project and the narratives you aimed to explore?

KD: Jamaica was eponymously named because all of the work references my maternal heritage stemming from the island while using this heritage as a benchmark to explore and reinterpret the nation's history and consider all the histories it encompasses. I made work about slave Rebellions such as Tacky's War and our greatest cultural export, Rastafari, with as much in between as I could fit in the realm of my personal stories back home and the more grand narratives that these stories fit into.

YD: Being represented by Welancora Gallery, how has this partnership influenced your exposure and opportunities within the art world?

KD: The gallery has been a great support system and reference point for my professional aspirations and goals. I'm an artist who's always creating because I can't help myself, so speaking practically, it's comforting to know that there's a space within which my works can be shown in a welcome, holistic way. This business is one of the hardest that anyone could choose to engage in, so any sort of support system that we artists can attain is valuable beyond measure. In its best form, a gallery should represent the manifestation of that support system in a space where Art can flourish and be properly appreciated. To work with a gallery that has experience promoting Art made by artists with Caribbean heritage, amongst the many others that make up our diaspora, is something that I'm always grateful for.

YD: As an artist deeply rooted in Brooklyn, how do you engage with and contribute to the local art community?

KD: Building off the last question, my first formal gallery relationship needs to be with one that exists right here in Brooklyn. For many years, I showed my work independently and was deliberately very picky about who I'd work with because I always wanted my work to be represented the right way. I was born and raised in Brooklyn and have been making work here since I graduated from college in 2017. All my work reflects my journey as someone who has been formed and is constantly informed by this Borough and its people. Specifically, I grew up in a neighborhood called Flatbush, which has been affected heavily by gentrification and the growing financial disparities in our country in recent years. I look at my work as an artifact that carries the history of the Caribbean community that raised me in this area, that welcomed my parents from their countries in the 90s and '80s, and that persists in as many ways as it can in a less and less forgiving world for oppressed peoples of African descent.

YD: In what ways does your work challenge or reinterpret traditional Caribbean artistic expressions to address contemporary issues?

KD: The Caribbean represents one of the most racially complex, ethnically mixed places on the planet. I exist as a living, breathing piece of that complexity, and by extension, my work speaks to that state of being. There's beauty in there, but there's also madness. I consider the bright and the dark aspects of this in my work because that is the only way to express the truth of our paradoxically geopolitically chaotic and environmentally harmonious disposition. The ultimate aspiration and call to action within what I do is for the unity of our people towards our collective liberation, which would function for the benefit of all peoples, and rediscovery of the identity that was stripped away from us as the human origin point of civilization in the cradle of Africa.

YD: The theme of this issue focuses on reimagining power and cultural reclamation. How does your art confront historical power dynamics and contribute to the discourse on equity and liberation within Black and POC communities?

KD: The history of the Caribbean, and people of African heritage at large, has been told by many different people from many different points of view, but the thing that stands out the most is the reality that those who have been most oppressed have been the least listened to by the ears of History. I want my work to function as a visual primary source document, made from the internal perspective of someone descended from the Native peoples of the Caribbean, the enslaved Africans who were brought there, and indentured Indian workers who brought as much of their culture as they could to the other side of the world in search of greater opportunity for their progeny. By distilling my experience, I am also speaking to the progress and mixture of each of these journeys.

YD: Can you discuss how your work embodies resistance and resilience, particularly in the context of post-colonial Caribbean identities?

KD: The Caribbean identity is brought about by a truly otherworldly resilience. I think the best way to speak about how the work embodies this resilience is to speak about the characteristics of the work as benchmarks, similar to how the prodding Baseline of a reggae song represents an analogy to the African drum, a sonic Benchmark for our peoples' spiritual memory. The work is rough, textured, layered, colorful, lush, full, and harmonious, and at the same time, cacophonous, unyielding, and brutal at times, containing a screeching desire to assert itself no matter the surrounding context. These are the characteristics that make up our people and have been cultivated by our experience, colonially and in all that occurred prior. We are still living on this "Capture Land," as Rasta, like Chronixx, would say, yet the Art that we make out of this context is beautiful enough to stand out in such a way that speaks to the heart and soul of what it means to be human, from music to dance to visual Art.

YD: How do you envision the role of artists in shaping future narratives of marginalized communities, especially in light of current global social movements?

KD: Every narrative has been shaped by artists over time, whether marginalized or mainstream. The greatest, most memorable ages in human history are cauterized, galvanized, and reconciled in the artworks made during those times. Think about all the architecture produced by genius polymath Renaissance artists like Bernini and Michelangelo or the pyramids designed by Imhotep that still stand in Egypt, some of the oldest structures known to man. Sure, we have hieroglyphics and different kinds of artifacts left from those times, but the ways that we identify most with those people who are now long gone is in those iconic, almost mythologized pieces of Art that stand as testaments to who they were, and records of who they were on their way to becoming: us. So, really, the role of artists is the same as it's always been. It hasn't changed in the slightest, even though the times and tools of the trade have evolved. We will continue to make work that reflects life on itself uncompromisingly, and even amidst all the madness and ugliness that pervades the human experience, we will just as sensitively reflect the beauty that makes life worth living.