Description

Laylah Ali’s Untitled features three stylized figures rendered in black ink against a plain, white background. The tallest figure occupies the left side of the composition. It is shrouded in a long, elaborately patterned robe; its head is covered with a cowl topped by an orb-like headdress. At its midsection it carries a much smaller figure. To the right stands a third figure, which has a set of musical pipes slung on its back and wears a mask from which protrudes a large, five-feathered headdress. None of the three figures has visible arms, but the legs of the smallest figure extend awkwardly from the middle of its cocoon-like body. The three figures focus intently on one another, drawing the viewer’s attention to their wide eyes and black-rimmed eyelids. The relationship of these figures might be familial, but their identities and the connections between them are difficult to pin down.


Context and Analysis

Untitled is part of Ali’s Typology series of intricate ink drawings, which present the viewer with a population of imagined “types” involved in ambiguous interactions. Ali’s controlled artistic hand contrasts with the exotic headdresses, costumes, and hybrid features of her figures. Although their attire often provocatively engages with the “primitive” and its loaded cultural legacy, her figures cannot be universally read as non-Western; for example, they often wear exaggerated chain mail, courtly costumes, or ecclesiastically inspired robes that call to mind European styles of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.


Ali’s “types” seem to internalize much of the political and social commentary of her often violent Greenheads series (1996–2005). The artist emphasizes their anatomical, physical, and material features to highlight practices of classification: those we engage in as we look at others; those employed by the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology; and, more darkly, those used in racial profiling and in the now obsolete practice of eugenics. Ali’s work holds up a mirror to these practices, questioning their foundations, mutations, and continued use, especially in the post–9/11 era when we tend to regard “otherness” with suspicion or fear. Her graphic style engages with the history of cartoon and caricature, which artists have often used as vehicles for public political and social critique.


Ali’s figures elude any fixed interpretation with regard to their gender, race, and place in society, and she locates them against a blank white background, void of any further clues. Their facial features are pared down to essentialized marks, and their expressions are absurd, curious, and uneasy. It is up to each viewer to examine their costume and physiognomy for clues, bringing his or her own experiences, ideas, and preconceptions to this act of looking and assigning meaning. The eyes of Ali’s figures are intense and focused, highlighting the gaze as an important means for the construction of identity and gender, and as a site of power for both the beholder and the beheld. As intended by the artist, the viewer, by interpreting these constructed, unknowable, and uncategorizable “types,” creates part of the meaning of her work. 1


Connections

The Currier acquired Ali’s Untitled in 2012, along with another ink drawing from the Typology series (2005; Currier, 2012.22 ) and a gouache from the earlier Greenheads series (1998; Currier, 2012.21). Together, these works trace the development of Ali’s investigation of power, identity, and social interactions in our contemporary world. Ali’s work is in dialogue with the work of other artists in the Currier collection. One example is Glenn Ligon, whose Invisible Man (Two Views) (1991; Currier, 2010.22.a,b ) similarly explores issues of identity and perception. Another is Ambreen Butt, whose Daughter of the East series (2008; Currier, 2012.26.1,2012.26.2,2012.26.3,2012.26.4,2012.26.5) highlights the complexity of visual cultural signifiers, such as the burka, that have been caricatured and attacked in the West in the wake of 9/11.


Written by Michelle Millar Fisher

Notes
1 “Laylah Ali insists that viewers ultimately create the meaning of her work” (Baker & Walker 2007, 7n). Ali confirms this: “I invest about seventy percent of the meaning and the viewer provides the rest” (quoted in Bryan-Wilson, Rothschild & Young 2012, 8).

Bibliography

Ali, Laylah. “Power.” Art 21: Art in the 21st Century. Season 3, 2005. DVD.

Ali, Laylah. Types. Exh. cat. St. Louis, MO: Contemporary Art Museum, 2004.

Ali, Laylah, and Kristin Helmick-Brunet. Projects 75: Laylah Ali: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, March 12–May 21, 2002. Exh. cat. New York: MoMA, 2002.

Baker, Alex, and Kara Walker. Laylah Ali: Typology. Exh. cat. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2007.

Bryan-Wilson, Julia, Deborah Rothschild, and Kevin Young. The Greenheads Series. Exh. cat. Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, 2012.

Crutchfield, Margo. Material Witness: Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Douglas Gordon, Santiago Sierra, Johnny Coleman, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba and Laylah Ali. Exh. cat. Cleveland, OH: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004.

Fallon, Roberta. “Pretty in Ink: Laylah Aliʼs Deformed Drawings Are Full of Drama.” Philadelphia Weekly, April 4, 2008, 38.

Schneider, Claire. Laylah Ali: Painting on Paper. Exh. cat. Buffalo, NY: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2003.