Orange Grove

Self-taught US artist Clifford Prince King documents his intimate relationships in traditional, everyday settings that speak to his experiences as a queer Black man. Orange Grove is a series of dark and handsome images, filled with King’s intricate portraits that flow like tapestries. King makes the everyday transparent while embracing possible futures, through a sense of fantasy and daydream. Woven into the narrative is King’s 2018 HIV diagnosis, and the subsequent shifts in the body that illness brings. As King describes, “The work I make is the work I wish I had seen growing up, to make my process and my understanding easier. That links back to the faces being hidden in some images, I think it allows for people to put themselves in that photograph.”

Through a warm lens, King tenderly captures the beauty of companionship and self-realisation. These images offer a sense of community – as we witness lovers and friends in the ether of vulnerability, King’s portraits remind the viewer that sex and intimacy are intrinsically a collaboration.