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Paul Mpagi Sepuya is an artist based in San Diego, focusing his photography projects on the interplay of histories and possibilities in portraiture, queer homoerotic networks, and the material potential of blackness. His creative interests span queer literary modernism and the responsibilities of representation and refusal. Sepuya earned an MFA in Photography from UCLA in 2016, but prior to that, he lived and worked in New York City, where he received a BFA from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 2004. His 2005-2007 zine series 'SHOOT' and the body of work 'Beloved Object & Amorous Subject, Revisited' (2005-2008) contributed to his recognition during the re-emergence of queer zine culture in the 2000s. He has participated in various artist-in-residence programs and his work is featured in numerous permanent collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOCA Los Angeles, and the Guggenheim Museum. Some notable solo exhibitions of his work include 'Double Enclosure' at Fotomuseum Amsterdam and 'Daylight Studio / Dark Room Studio' at Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Sepuya's artistic contributions were also highlighted in major group exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial.
University of California San Diego • La Jolla, CA
Director of Media Arts MFA Program, teaching photography and art theory.
Administered by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Curricular groups include Climate-Ocean-Atmosphere (COAP), Geosciences (GEO), and Ocean Biosciences (OBP).