Through my practice, I chronicle the lived and imagined experiences of and between human beings. I believe painting can be a tool in considering the emotional, psychological complexity of an individual’s story and identity. Creating imagery that connects one to the realm of another, I alter perception and invoke empathy towards my subjects, depicting their reality across a visceral lens. Focusing on portraiture and figuration, my subjects include family, friends, and cultural figures placed in constructed settings. I render my subjects in oil paint, incorporating mixed media, collage, and handmade paper to build the abstracted environments in which they exist.
The works submitted are a selection of paintings examining a range of subjects, with regards to cultural figures, romantic, familial relationships, and individual identity. This work essentially examines my interest in seeing and understanding the likeness and lived experience of people. Through the different subjects’ primary gaze, the work connects the viewer to them, establishing a relationship that garners insight and introspection. The atmosphere of each piece hosts distinct environments that fluctuate from tangible to ethereal, framing the viewers’ perception towards their pain, joy questioning, resolve, and role in the world in which they live.
I create the work on primed or raw canvas, both stretched and unstretched. Using a graphite pencil, I then draft out the composition and figure. I render portraits, figures using oil paint and brushes, layering over time. While constructing the setting of each work I used gel medium to adhere the different cut-out shapes and textures to the surface, further informing the structure and body using a wide range of materials such as rust, denim, silk, wool, leather, beads, newsprint and magazines. I further add pigmented handmade paper to the compositions, using abaca, cotton, hemp, and denim fiber.
The ongoing language of painting presents a long history of the classical tradition, different movements, and techniques. In particular, as it pertains to black portraiture and conceptualism, it is to this day, lacking in the recording of black lived experience. Early 20th century innovators documenting black life through art such as Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold were influential in telling diverse stories. In contemporary art we see the tradition carried on with artists such as Henry Taylor, Kerry James Marshall, and Tschabalala Self. By prominently depicting black individual stories, my work further expands conversations surrounding black art portraiture, figuration, and theory.

About the artist

Khalif Tahir Thompson (b. 1995, lives and works in New York, NY) is best recognized for his powerful portraiture and figuration work, incorporating painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, and paper-making into his practice, while exploring notions of self through the scopes of race, cultural narratives, and the familial.

He recently obtained an MFA in Painting/ Printmaking from Yale University School of Art, following a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Purchase College and completed a fellowship at the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in NYC, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Jerome Emerging Artist residency at The Anderson Center. He was selected as a member of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal residency in 2022. After participating at The Royal Drawing School at Dumfries House, Scotland, in July 2023, Khalif Tahir Thompson joined the AAF/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts, Austria, in August 2023.

His recent projects include the solo exhibition Cherry at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in North Carolina; his participation in the group exhibition The Stories We Tell at Victoria Miro in London; and, most recently, his participation in Bold: New Voices in Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, on view until 28 June 2026.

His work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX; The Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM), St. Louis, MO; The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; The Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; The Rubell Museum, Miami, FL; The Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS; the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; AMOCA – The Artistic Museum of Contemporary Art, Cardiff, UK; the Amoako Boafo Foundation, Accra, Ghana; Black Art in America LLC, Atlanta, GA; Colección Rolando Jiménez, Puerto Rico; the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University, IL; The Grant Hill Collection, Orlando, FL; and the Collection d’art Société Générale, Paris, France.

Khalif Tahir Thompson is represented by Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in partnership with Victoria Miro.