ARTISTS
Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love
Drawing together photographs and installations from both his celebrated and lesser-known series, Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love charts new connections across the artistic practice of Lyle Ashton Harris (b. 1965, Bronx, NY). The exhibition explores Harris鈥檚 critical examination of identity and self-portraiture while tracing central themes and formal approaches in his work of the last 35 years.
The artist鈥檚 recently-completed Shadow Works anchor the exhibition. In these meticulous constructions, photographic prints are set within geometric frames of stretched Ghanaian funerary textiles, along with shells, shards of pottery, and cuttings of the artist鈥檚 own hair. Our first and last love follows the cues of the Shadow Works鈥� collaged and pictured elements鈥攚hich include earlier artworks and reference materials, personal snapshots, and handwritten notes鈥攖o shed light on Harris鈥檚 layered approach to his practice.
Harris鈥檚 work engages with broad social and political dialogues while also speaking with revelatory tenderness to his own communities, and to personal struggles, sorrows, and self-illuminations. Groupings centered around singular Shadow Works will expand upon these multiple throughlines, including Harris鈥檚 continued examination of otherness and belonging; the framing and self-presentation of Black and queer individuals; violence as a dark undercurrent of intimacy and desire; tenderness and vulnerability; and notions of legacy鈥攂oth inherited and self-defined.
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Drawing together photographs and installations from both his celebrated and lesser-known series, Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love charts new connections across the artistic practice of Lyle Ashton Harris (b. 1965, Bronx, NY). The exhibition explores Harris鈥檚 critical examination of identity and self-portraiture while tracing central themes and formal approaches in his work of the last 35 years.
The artist鈥檚 recently-completed Shadow Works anchor the exhibition. In these meticulous constructions, photographic prints are set within geometric frames of stretched Ghanaian funerary textiles, along with shells, shards of pottery, and cuttings of the artist鈥檚 own hair. Our first and last love follows the cues of the Shadow Works鈥� collaged and pictured elements鈥攚hich include earlier artworks and reference materials, personal snapshots, and handwritten notes鈥攖o shed light on Harris鈥檚 layered approach to his practice.
Harris鈥檚 work engages with broad social and political dialogues while also speaking with revelatory tenderness to his own communities, and to personal struggles, sorrows, and self-illuminations. Groupings centered around singular Shadow Works will expand upon these multiple throughlines, including Harris鈥檚 continued examination of otherness and belonging; the framing and self-presentation of Black and queer individuals; violence as a dark undercurrent of intimacy and desire; tenderness and vulnerability; and notions of legacy鈥攂oth inherited and self-defined.
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