BIO
Felandus Thames, born in 1974 in Jackson, Mississippi, currently resides and creates in Connecticut. After graduating from Jackson State University with a Bachelor of Arts, where he was honored with the Mississippi Arts Commission’s prestigious “Individual Artist Fellowship” in the visual arts category, Thames pursued his artistic journey by earning a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from the esteemed Yale School of Art in 2010. In 2011, he made his mark in the New York art scene by mounting his inaugural solo exhibition at the renowned Tilton Gallery. Thames has also enriched the art world by serving as a Visiting Critic at the Rhode Island School of Design. His artwork has found its way into esteemed collections, including the Mississippi Museum of Art, Mystic Seaport Museum, the San Antonio Spurs, Florence Griswold Museum, and The Studio Museum of Harlem.
Recent group exhibitions featuring his work include “Get in the Game” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, “Spectrum” at the Museum of the African Diaspora San Francisco, “Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century” at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and “Resistance in Black and White” at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Additionally, his work was curated in the critically acclaimed traveling exhibition “The Dirty South” at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. His work has garnered significant critical attention, with favorable mentions in prestigious publications such as Art In America, Artforum, New York Times, and Hyperallergic. Recently, Thames has received recognition with awards from the Harpo Foundation and the biannually awarded Louis Comfort Tiffany Prize for 2024 - 25.
(FULL CV)
STATEMENT
I am interested in creating vessels able to contain beauty and trauma at an equilibrium. Work that functions in the way that Black music is endowed by, but not the sum of, Black joy, pain, and suffering. I am invested in the residue of memory decoupled from nostalgia or narrative. Material choices, never superficial, become central actors in my practice and often function as surrogates to contested histories and lived experiences of those who consume them. Materials are the repository of history and memory in my practice.