I remembered Laylah Ali’s work looking like the paintings in this book. Flat gouache depictions of almost funny cartoon like characters involved with some kind of struggle with a racial or political issue- nooses but also gym shorts and sneakers. When I saw the cover of this book I was surprised- still the same style characters, but now a whole other style of mark-making. The drawings are full of cross-hatchings, tiny patterns and woven black lines. I like this contrast, flipping through the book between the paintings and those drawings. In the new drawings the characters seem to be in traditional native costumes of some kind- large headdresses and robes. A few show a couple engaged in some sort of tongue kiss. A really interesting interview, in the middle of this book, of Laylah Ali by Kara Walker explains some of this mysterious imagery-

“KW: The characters you’ve drawn often strike me as autobiographical—even in earlier series, the Greenheads look like aspects of you:tyrannical, heroic, meek, withdrawn. In your recent drawings, I also get the sense that your world has grown to accept the couple as a unit locked in an awkward battle, one that resembles romance. Can you talk about all the tongue-kissing in your recent work?

LA: Tongue-probing more than tongue-kissing, it seems to me. Taking each other’s temperature. I don’t think of them as highly erotic or sexual. Some of the interactions have within them aspects of intimacy and need and I suppose those are the ones that I am most uneasy about.”

I love envisioning these two famous female African American artist’s who focus on similar issues of race and struggle but portray them very differently, sitting and talking about each other’s work and their views on the world. Here’s another bit from the interview I enjoyed:

“KW: Since I think it is imperative that black woman have a voice in this culture, and since I describe myself as a black woman, and experience life through that raced and gendered perspective, I think it’s fair to say that my getting up is a political act. Maybe a pretty weak one, but one that leads me toward thinking a thought or committing an act that changes a small piece of the world. Also, I have a daughter, so I have to get up.

LA: Wow, that’s righteous! I feel small, tepidly brown, Woody Allen-like. I’m not so sure about changing a small piece of the world though. Is it possible that just being an American creates problems? That we are bred in such a way that we can’t help it, even with good intentions? I think the black/white paradigm has its truths, but it also serves to obscure how we as non-white people can aspire to and do the same sort of damage, whether it be environmental or how we think of our own individuality as so sacred. Or our strongly held belief in our inherent power as a nation to make change. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to act—I am just suspicious of having so much certainty.”

This book was made on the occasion of Laylah’s exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. You can learn a ton more about Laylah from the PBS Art:21 documentary series right here. Pick up a copy of this book here.

© Julia Rothman 2007