Karon Davis

Karon Davis (née Vereen; born 1977), is an American visual artist, and a founder of the Underground Museum in Los Angeles. She is known as a sculptor and an installation artist touching on issues of race and identity in America through representations of the human body. Her artistic practice is influenced by dance, theater, and moving image.

Early life and education Karon Vereen was born in 1977 in Reno, Nevada. Daughter of professional dancers Nancy Bruner and Broadway performer Ben Vereen, Davis grew up influenced by the performing arts. Bruner retired from her ballet career to raise Karon and her three siblings. Her father is noted American actor, dancer, and singer, Ben Vereen.

Davis attended the theater department at Spelman College and took classes at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company before studying and graduating in film (2001) at University of Southern California's Cinematic Arts department.

Career

In 2016, Karon Davis presented the solo show "Karon Davis: Pain Management" at Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles. The exhibition featured her signature plaster sculpture bodies, of adults and children, that physically take up space as a large-scale installation. The show commented on emotional experiences of loss and endured agony. In 2017, Davis was the recipient of The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant.

Davis's Mary (2016) from the Pain Management series, was presented at Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow 2020-21, the contemporary arts triennial in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In 2021, Davis revealed new installations memorializing Bobby Seale and the Black Panther Party in the solo show "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York. One of the installations consists of sandbags leaning against a wall in which a well circulated journalistic photograph of Bobby Seale, the cofounder and Panther leader. The image was taken while Seale was waiting trial during the Chicago Seven Trial event, in 1969. For the sculpture Bobby Seale and The People's Free Food Program (2020–21), a cast of Seale is surrounded by fifty bags of golden food placed on the floor. This installation was later acquired by the Pérez Art Museum Miami. The solo exhibition Beauty Must Suffer was on view at New York's Salon 94 gallery through December 2023, and it showcased her plaster-cast sculptures of ballerinas.

Underground Museum In 2012, Karon Davis and Noah Davis co-founded the Underground Museum in Arlington Heights, a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood in Central Los Angeles, California. The museum was a cultural hub for Black art; artists such as Henry Taylor, Lorna Simpson, Arthur Jafa, and Deana Lawson presented their work there, while musicians John Legend and Solange Knowles launched albums there.

Karon Davis presented her first institutional show "Sculptures & Photographs" for the museum inauguration. After ten years of operations, the Underground Museum closed in March 2022.

Artworks in collections Beauty Must Suffer, 2023. Cat's Cradle, 2019. Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, U.S. Gabriel, 2016. Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, U.S. Nicotine, 2016. Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S. Noah and his Ark, 2017. Private collection, California, U.S. Overture, 2023. Oya, 2016. Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, U.S. Principal Lewis, 2019. Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, U.S. Stairway to Heaven, 2019. Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, U.S.