Shuriya Davis didn’t caption their bruise-colored, semi-abstract homages to Big Gay Idiot DJ, the early 2010s phenom formerly known as DJ Total Freedom, when they posted them on Instagram. In September, the Alabama-born, Mississippi-based artist began flooding the app with these brown, purple, and green premonitions from a muddy future.

After a summer of silence (due to a health crisis) from a hitherto loquacious account, the posts were the first sign that Davis was in the studio again. “Working with portraiture is the quickest way for me to get ideas,” they confess over the phone.

For the 27-year-old, the process is a kind of emotional shorthand. “I’m always returning to those images of DJ Total Freedom. They have an intimacy,” says Davis. “Those images set the tone for what I’m interested in making: figures that are deep and contemplative about the world they’re existing in.”

Muses, like DJ Total Freedom, enter the studio via Instagram screenshots and websites like Black Archives, a well of documentation that underscores the plurality and complexity of Black experiences. Once applied to a work however, a reference image—even one freighted with meaning—functions less as a blueprint than as something to riff on.

It’s no surprise that Davis looks up to Georg Baselitz, whose work embraces that moment where portraiture grazes abstraction. Nor is it shocking that Davis claims they learned to draw from studying Willem de Kooning in undergrad at the Rhode Island School of Design. Unlike their figurative peers’ interest in representation as a way to affirm certain narratives, Davis does not seek resolution. The messiness of personhood is left intact. 

“I lose track of where things begin and end a lot, so I try to make paintings that portray that,” they say. “One mark helps another mark find its resonance. I make use of every mark so that there are no accidents in this creation.”

At the moment, following memorable inclusions in group shows like Nahmad Contemporary’s “Ugly Painting” and a run of sold-out solo exhibitions, Davis’s marks are still in their accumulation phase. But there are more presentations on the way, at New York’s Derosia, and at Stars, their long-term gallery in Los Angeles. That’s enough of a plan for Davis. Painting has their full attention. 

For more about CULTURED's 2023 Young Artists, read our features with Adraint Khadafhi Bereal, Emma Stern, and Oscar yi Hou.