In this striking work, Titus Kaphar employs oil and tar to obscure and fragment figurative imagery, confronting the viewer with questions of erasure, memory, and historical visibility. The tar functions as both medium and metaphor, burying or distorting elements of the composition in a way that evokes the suppression of Black identity and presence throughout art history. The artist's custom frame further emphasizes the constructed nature of representation, suggesting that the boundaries defining whose stories are told and preserved are never neutral.