Isaiah Davis Makes Metal—and Masculinity—Seem Soft
ARTnews profiled artist Isaiah Davis, whose sculptures use materials such as secondhand leather and repurposed steel to examine masculinity, queerness, and Blackness through themes of transformation and containment. The article discusses Davis’s 2021 Participant Inc work “White American Flag” and his 2025 show at King’s Leap Fine Arts in New York, where he used disused steel beams from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and from a Columbia University building (where he received his MFA that year). One work, “Slave” (2025), is described as resembling a wheeled crib connected by chains, with lyrics from Prince’s song “Slave” scarred into its surface. Davis links his interest in steel to the 1991 film “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and to his upbringing in the Bronx with a Nigerian mother and an American father, and he notes that as a Black man in America he thinks about prison daily, a concern echoed in sculptures featuring chains, cage-like forms, locks, and blowtorch-induced blue tones.
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This story was covered in Museum Meltdowns and Art’s Arresting Protests