Taha Clayton’s ‘Historic Presence’ opens at Tremaine Gallery

For Brooklyn-based artist Taha Clayton, history isn’t something sealed behind glass. It breathes, moves and stands before us in the bodies of everyday people. His upcoming solo exhibition, “Historic Presence” at the Tremaine Gallery at Hotchkiss, takes its philosophical cue from James Baldwin’s declaration that “History is not the past. It is the present.”

Clayton’s luminous portraits center on elders, friends and acquaintances whose quiet dignity embodies what he calls “the common everyday story” often missing from official narratives. “The historical is talking about something from the past,” Clayton said, “but these are men and women that are living in this day, walking with the ancestors, creating the stories.”

Clayton describes the series as rooted in a search for these overlooked narratives. “It started with Baldwin and John Coltrane… and then it blossomed to the people of the times, the stories that get overlooked.” His subjects are people he knows or meets through everyday encounters. “It’s the models, it’s their lives. It’s us collaborating, as opposed to me putting a costume on someone,” he said.

Born in Houston, raised in Toronto and now based in Brooklyn, Clayton brings a cross-cultural sensibility to classical realism. His figures frequently appear in clothing inspired by mid-20th-century style, echoing the visual language of the 1930s through ’50s. But rather than nostalgia, he’s after something more layered, a kind of collapsing of timelines. “I’m documenting this moment,” he explains, “but I’m also challenging myths and creating new ones.”

The use of fabric is a striking element in Clayton’s work, operating on both aesthetic and symbolic levels. “I’m playing on ideas like ‘being cut from the cloth,’ ‘the thread’ of an idea,” he explained. The act of painting on cotton alone carries layered historical meaning, but he deliberately reframes it as a site of empowerment. For him, cloth/cotton signals ceremony, resilience and transformation.

‘Sunkiss’ by Taha Clayton.Natalia Zukerman

Clayton has an evolving and deepening relationship with this area. As an artist-in-residence at the Wassaic Project in Amenia, he said, “We were the first residency out of the pandemic, and I brought my wife and daughters. It was a two-week residency that ended up being the whole summer. It just kind of evolved and that’s how my relationship upstate has been.” His series “The Cloth” was presented at Troutbeck in Amenia in 2022 and he has returned as a featured speaker and educator for the Troutbeck Symposium, the multi-day gathering at Troutbeck where middle and high-school students present year-long research projects on under-told local and national histories. “It’s been four years I’ve been with them, so I’m like artist/mentor now,” said Clayton.

Clayton will be in residence again at Hotchkiss for the week leading up to the opening, offering students multiple ways to engage with the artist and providing a rich, hands-on experience of his practice as well as his guidance. “Taha is a remarkable artist to work with because he meets students where they are,” said Tremaine Gallery director, Terri Moore. “He listens deeply, treats their ideas with real respect and shows them that their own stories are worthy subjects. That combination of humility, rigor and generosity is rare — and it’s why students respond to him so strongly.”

‘Crown Maker’ by Taha Clayton.Provided

Clayton’s career has garnered international — even interstellar — recognition, including exhibitions in cities from New York to Barcelona. One of his works was selected for the Lunar Codex’s “Nova Collection” in 2024, part of an ambitious global archive designed to preserve creative works on the Moon as a time capsule of human culture. Clayton recalled the moment the capsule landed with characteristic understatement: “I’m just on the computer watching with a beer thinking, ‘Ok, this is cool.’ But, like the next day, I still had to get up and take the kids to school.”

Interspersed throughout the gallery are ceramic shields that add to the warrior-like quality of some of the subjects. The repetition of a water fountain is particularly evocative, another reclamation that amplifies history without obscuring the truth that shaped it.

Clayton describes his practice as a form of meditation, saying he feels time dissolve while working. “It’s like past and future is all happening,” he said. That sense of temporal layering resonates with the exhibition’s central idea that personal memory and collective history are inseparable. Clayton’s portraits are about recognizing and celebrating the magnitude and multitudes contained in ordinary lives, the reclamation and attention to historical detail and the carrying of history forward with incredible beauty and unwavering dignity.

“Historic Presence” will be on view Feb. 14-April 5 at the Tremaine Gallery at Hotchkiss, 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville. An artists’ talk is scheduled Thursday, Feb. 19, at 7 p.m., followed by an opening reception Saturday, Feb. 21, from 4 to 6 p.m.