Laylah Ali: Notes/Drawings/Untitled Afflictions
Laylah Ali: Notes/Drawings/Untitled Afflictions
James and Audrey Foster Galleries
August 30, 2008 – January 4, 2009
(public opening exhibition reception: September 4 from 7 – 9 pm)
Laylah Ali: Notes/Drawings/Untitled Afflictions exhibits a new group of drawings by this critically acclaimed artist. Over the past decade, Laylah Ali has gained international recognition for her ability to condense complex, socio-political 
commentary into deceptively simple imagery. Her signature combination of jarring narratives and graphic visual style are best known through her “Greenheads” series, first featured in The 1999 DeCordova Annual Exhibition. Her jarring combination of humor and violence, in both form and content, cultivates what she describes as a “highly specific ambiguity.”
While language has always been at the heart of Ali’s investigations – in its cultural limitations and misinterpretations – she has just recently incorporated it into her drawings. Notes/Drawings/Untitled Afflictions marks the inaugural museum presentation of Ali’s newest body of work.
The notes are a compilation of random thoughts, overheard conversations, and snippets from newspapers, radio, and other media outlets. Ali carefully organizes these “found” texts in brief vignettes that are almost poetic in their attention to rhythm and syntax. The artist’s characteristically ambiguous characters are drawn over and under the notes. They too are cobbled together—dressed in masks, wigs, and costumes that confuse rather than clarify their sexual and racial identities.
In both word and image, Ali questions the conventions of our society by complicating its visual and linguistic symbols. In her art, meaning is never fixed. Exactly what her characters are doing, or why, is never made clear. Language, too, is slippery. Like imagery, it relies heavily on convention and context. All representation, she seems to say, is limited, unstable, and wholly unable to express truth. Bearing unexpected combinations of clothing, skin color, and hair, Ali’s characters subvert and question conventional visual markers of identity.
Laylah Ali lives and works in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and is an Associate Professor of Art at Williams College. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and DeCordova Museum, among others, and was exhibited at the 2003 Venice Biennale and the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She was a featured artist in the PBS series Art: 21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, broadcast in 2005.
This exhibition will be accompanied by a brochure and 80-page catalogue with additional text by poet Kevin Young. The catalogue will be available in mid-late October. Funding and support for Notes/Drawings/Untitled Afflictions has been generously provided by the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, the Robert E. Davoli and Eileen L. McDonagh Charitable Foundation, James and Audrey Foster, Steven Rogowski, Anthony and Beth Terrana, and the Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
This exhibition has been organized by Assistant Curator Dina Deitsch.
Evening Conversation
On November 13 at 6:30 pm , join Laylah Ali and DeCordova’s Assitant Curator Dina Deitsch for an evening of conversation discussing Ali’s work and the state of drawing as a re-emerging contemporary art form. $5 Members & Students with valid ID/$ 7 Non-Members. RSVP to Emily Silet or 781/259-3632. Tickets will be held at the door.
Image: Laylah Ali, Untitled, 2008, gouache, colored pencil and ballpoint pen on paper, 11 x 8 1/2 in. (unframed), Lent by the Artist, Courtesy Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA
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