“Noah is my Osiris. He will live forever through his work. My assignment is to gather these parts of my love and protect them,” Karon Davis said upon returning from the opening of Noah Davis’s most extensive retrospective to date at the Barbican in London (February 6 – May 11, 2025). The show, following its debut at DAS MINSK in Potsdam (September 7, 2024 – January 5, 2025), will travel in the summer to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (June 8 – August 31, 2025). Bringing together approximately sixty works spanning the artist’s complete oeuvre, this major touring exhibition offers the first and most comprehensive overview of Davis’ profoundly imaginative practice as a world-builder—someone who never stopped questioning the reality around him.
Last month, David Zwirner’s Upper East Side location hosted a unique tribute to Noah Davis’s extraordinary work, viewed through the lens of his life companion, widow and fellow artist, Karon. Concurrently with that show, she took center stage in a striking performance at the Metropolitan Museum, part of the exhibition “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt 1876–Now,” which created a rare opportunity to draw compelling parallels with the transhistorical exploration of symbols that both she and her husband have long engaged in.
In The Resurrection of Osiris, Karon Davis traced the story of the Egyptian deity Osiris’s murder and resurrection, a myth that laid the foundation for ancient Egyptian mummification and embalming practices—an enduring theme in her work. Her fascination with these rituals stems from a desire to preserve memory, honor the lost and hold onto the past. The references to Ancient Egypt—particularly its symbols and its influence on Black culture—along with the history of civilization that thread through her practice also surface in Noah Davis’s paintings, including those shown at Zwirner, deepening the connection between their artistic languages.
Following that revelatory yet deeply personal exhibition and her unforgettable performance in the Met’s Pyramid, Observer spoke with Karon Davis about the resonances between her practice and her husband’s—a dialogue that the show allowed her to explore and amplify in ways more profound than ever before.
Noah Davis became a legendary figure in contemporary art following his untimely death at 32 from a rare form of cancer. He was not only an extraordinarily gifted painter, able to capture the layered realities of Black life with striking depth, but also the co-founder of the Underground Museum in Los Angeles alongside Karon Davis. The institution quickly became a groundbreaking force, dedicated to amplifying diverse voices and challenging the traditional hierarchies of the art world. Throughout their life together, the couple shared a profound commitment to merging their artistic practices with a militant spirit—leaving an enduring mark by fostering creativity, building community and shaping the course of contemporary Black culture.
The two met when Karon Davis, a New York native, was working as an assistant for a film director in L.A. They married in 2008 in a Miami courthouse during Art Basel, the same year Noah made his debut in the Rubell Family Collection’s first iteration of “30 Americans.” From that moment forward, their lives and artistic paths became inextricably intertwined, with their relationship shaping and fueling the trajectory of their creative legacies.
“Ancient Reign,” which closed at Zwirner at the end of January, offered a rare, intimate look at Noah Davis’ formative collages and works on paper, accompanied by two suites of his paintings. “It was important to me to share this side of Noah. He is known for his paintings, but they just scratch the surface,” Karon Davis said. “He was a maker… a maker of objects and worlds. These works have never been seen before, so I hope this gives people insight into the multidisciplinary artist and visionary he was.”
The collages selected by Karon Davis fully embraced the power of juxtaposition, layering disparate sources and symbologies to unveil hidden correspondences and activate new meanings. Time, space and different cultures collide and collapse within the confines of these multilayered compositions, often set against a deep black backdrop that suggests both oblivion and the imposed erasure of entire histories. Elements from across art history and visual culture emerge in these eclectic, synchronic assemblages, suspended in a space that feels at once timeless and precariously on the verge of disappearance.
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Though they may appear improvisatory, every juxtaposition is deliberate, playing on dialectical tensions between elements to generate unexpected meanings. As curator Franklin Sirmans describes it, “Davis’s work is characterized by its sense of possibility… [They] are open to interpretation, depending on what history or baggage we bring to our encounter.”
Among the works in “Ancient Reign” were several collages referencing Egyptian mythology and iconography—an ongoing fascination shared by both artists. “I was studying ancient myths and history,” Karon Davis said. “Noah joined me on these journeys through history. Their home became a portal through which imaginations could run wild. “We exchanged stories, dreams and techniques for making art,” she added, reflecting on the constant creative dialogue that shaped and enriched both of their practices.
In Untitled (2015), Noah Davis juxtaposes the base of an Egyptian sculpture with the iconic image of Diana, Princess of Wales, transforming her into a kind of sphinx and creating a visual parallel that subtly invites layers of critical and political interpretation. Similarly, in another work, Davis positions an image of an Egyptian sculpture alongside a photograph of another modern royal, Princess Grace of Monaco (1929–1982), both set against a vibrant, gestural abstract field of color.
Connecting even more directly to Karon Davis’s recent performance at the Met, an entire group of works Noah Davis created in 2010 was also inspired by the myth of Isis and Osiris, blending modern imagery and recent Black history with references to Egyptian art and society.
“The work is more intimate to me,” says Karon Davis, referring to the collages. “Some of the works give the viewer a chance to delve into his world-building process. Some of these works were his sketches for paintings; others were vision boards for the Underground Museum or spaces we discussed building in the future.”
A limited selection of paintings accompanied these revelatory, foundational works on paper in the Zwirner show, offering further insight into the relationship between images and source material that shaped Davis’s artistic practice. Among them, a group of paintings on the third floor repeated the same scene in an evocative blend of realism and abstraction, as figures progressively faded into spectral shadows—suggesting an intentional omission or the inexorable erasure of certain voices from the history of images.
“I am close to them all. I watched them be birthed,” Karon Davis said when asked if there was any work she felt particularly attached to or found especially revealing of their relationship in art and life. Notably, in 2016, her show “Pain Management” at Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles featured a central piece that Noah Davis had urged her to finish shortly before his death. Conceived as an amalgamation of the caregivers who had treated his cancer, the work stood as one of many projects the couple had developed together over the years, their practices continuously intertwining through an intimate exchange of ideas and contributions.
Still, as she explains, a special place is reserved for the pages from the book he created for the Underground Museum. “The book is one of the blueprints he left behind for me to follow. I often referred to it when making decisions about the garden and the building.” The Underground Museum, which officially opened in 2012 in partnership with MOCA, was envisioned as a space to revitalize the underserved working-class neighborhood of Arlington Heights in Los Angeles. A decade later, following the departure of its directors, the museum unexpectedly closed in 2022, a decision Karon Davis announced in a brief but poignant Instagram post.
In this ongoing weaving of stories, ideas and emotions shared through images, Noah Davis’s art remains, for Karon, a bridge to her husband’s legacy—a way to carry forward and nurture their shared vision and inspiration through her own evolving practice.
Noah Davis‘s largest survey to date is on view at the Barbican Centre in London through May 11, 2025.
