Been finding a lot of old photos I took as I clear off
this hard drive from college...
(Untitled) I AM A MAN
(1988)
by Glenn Ligon
This is kinda special to me, since I was just discussing this artist with
a good friend the other day.
My memory is bad, so I half forgot I took these, only to
discover them last night.
"Throughout his career, Ligon has used 'blackness' as a trope for both personal and collective experience. As Ligon has said (paraphrasing Muhammed Ali), 'It's not about me. It's about we.' The deliberately rough surface of the painting, which Ligon later documented by having a condition report made as an ancillary work of art, seems to index the scars and struggles of the work's great subject."
(from NGA.gov)
This work was inspired by 1,300 sanitation workers, striking after the death of two colleagues,
due to faulty equipment. These strikers' signs were made famous in 1968 by the photographs of Ernest Withers, shown below--
Gotta love the intersection of art & protest
mz.eyevee
#onandon
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