Arnold J. Kemp: Not One Thing

Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) / Medford is pleased to present Arnold J. Kemp: Not One Thing, the first institutional survey of work by the Chicago-based artist Arnold J. Kemp (b. 1968, Boston). The exhibition focuses on Kemp’s performative and material tendencies of masking, traced through his sculpture, painting, printmaking, photography, and plays from the last decade. Since the late 1990s, Kemp has created art objects that reference dualisms and multiplicities in the psyche, relating often to Blackness and the profound influence of West African aesthetics on modernism. Building upon his use of masks, doppelgängers, and surrogates, the artist makes many Arnold Kemps emerge with equally poignant emphases on beauty, horror, and play. Critically, the artist refuses the singularity of essentialized identities, instead grappling with legacies of conceptualism, Black and diasporic experiences, queer relationalities, and resistive modes of being.  

Not One Thing boldly asserts and simultaneously invites deeper contemplation of such polyvocality and includes a new sculptural commission, an evening of experimentally composed performances featuring Kemp’s theatrical works, and a pathmaking publication.  

The exhibition is accompanied by Arnold J. Kemp: A Reader co-published by Tufts University Art Galleries and no place press, designed by Geoff Kaplan, and edited by Rachel Churner, with contributions from Kemi Adeyemi, Sampada Aranke, Gregg Bordowitz, Huey Copland, Eungie Joo, Arnold J. Kemp, Kevin Killian, Laurel V. McLaughlin, Tausif Noor, Ed Roberson, Stephanie Snyder, and Lynne Tillman. 

Arnold J. Kemp: Not One Thing is organized by Interim Co-Director and Chief Curator Laurel V. McLaughlin with support from former TUAG director and current Davis Museum Ruth Gordon Shapiro '37 Director at Wellesley College Dina Deitsch. The exhibition aligns with the 150th anniversary celebration of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.