Arnold Joseph Kemp (b.1968) is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, educator and curator whose work explores Black identity, visibility and self-making while resisting fixed ideas about race and representation Kemp works across painting, photography, sculpture, performance and writing. His materials often absorb, reflect or obscure light: polished black shoe leather, aluminum foil and other reflective surfaces become metaphors for Black bodies that are simultaneously present and withheld from view. Kemp earned a combined B.A./B.F.A. from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1991 and an M.F.A. from Stanford University in 2005. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem and Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. In 2021, the Manetti Shrem Museum presented his solo exhibition I would survive. I could survive. I should survive., featuring paintings, sculpture and photography that examine the relationship between the personal and political, history and the present. Kemp also participated in UC Davis’ Visiting Artist Lecture Series that year. His sister, actor and director Margaret Laurena Kemp, is a professor at UC Davis.