I enjoy creating and spreading knowledgeable content for everyone around the world and try my best not to leave even the smallest of mistakes go unnoticed.
Laylah ali choreographer dean moss art21 exclusive
Laylah Ali (born 1968, Buffalo, New York) is a contemporary visual artist known for paintings in which ambiguous race relations are depicted with a graphic clarity and cartoon strip format.
In her youth, Ali originally intended to be a lawyer or a doctor. She received her B.A. (English and Studio Art) from Williams College, Williamstown, MA and her M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. She lives and works in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She is currently a professor at Williams College.
Work
In Ali's earlier work, she would draw or paint something violent. She focused more on the action, than the violence itself. In her current work, there is not a lot of focus on the act; she is more attentive to what happens before and after. The subject of Ali's most well-known gouache paintings are the Greenheads – characters designed to minimize or eliminate categorical differences of gender, height, age, and in some ways race.
The works are small scale gouache paintings and drawings on paper. She is known to prepare for many months, planning out every detail so there are no room for mistakes. Ali's work is based on life experiences. Although you may not be able to tell, she says all of her work holds meaning and that what's in her mind transcends from her hands on paper. About the performative nature of her work, Ali says, "The paintings can be like crude stages or sets, the figures like characters in a play. I think of them equally as characters and figures."
Since 2015, Ali has been working on a series of paintings she calls Acephalous, featuring figures she describes as gender conscious, potentially sexual or sexualized, some of which have racial characteristics and some of which do not have heads. "They are on an endless, determined trek, a multi-part journey," she says. "It has elements of a forced migration."
Laylah Ali has collaborated with dancer/choreographer Dean Moss at The Kitchen in 2005 with Figures on a Field and in 2014 with johnbrown. In 2002, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, commissioned Ali to create a wordless graphic novelette.
Collections
Ali’s works are included in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, among many others.
Solo and group exhibitions
Laylah Ali has exhibited in both the Venice Biennial (2003) and the Whitney Biennial (2004) Other exhibitions are as follows:
2008: Laylah Ali: Notes/Drawings/Untitled Afflictions, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park: August 30, 2008 - January 4, 2009
2008: Beyond Drawing: Constructed Realities, Ohio University Art Gallery, Athens Fantastical Imaginings, Delaware Center of Contemporary Arts, Wilmington— travelled to Julio Fine Arts Gallery, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore (2009); Political Circus, Florida Atlantic University, Ritter Art Gallery, Boca Raton; On the Margins, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri (catalog); Disguised, Rotwand Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland; Out of Shape, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (catalog)
2005: The Body. The Ruin, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia (catalog) Cut, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA Vivi-Seccion: Dibujo Contemporaneo, Museo de Arte Carillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico
2004: Whitney Biennial 2004, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (catalog) Material Witness, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH (catalog) The 10 Commandments, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany
1999: Bizarro World! The Parallel Universes of Comics and Fine Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL Collectors Collect Contemporary, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA The 1999 DeCordova Annual Exhibition, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (catalog)
1999: No Place Rather than Here, 303 Gallery, New York, NY
