The works of art featured in PICTURE ID: Contemporary African American Works on Paper by Glenn Ligon, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, Martin Puryear, John Rozelle, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and Fred Wilson were created in response to artistic developments and cultural debates prevalent throughout the late 1980s and 1990s in the United States. 

Invoking the rise of multicultural activism, concerns surrounding the AIDS crisis, conservative social and economic policies, rapid gentrification, and increasing urban crime during this time, each artist utilizes a mixture of text and image to tackle cultural stereotypes and to challenge oppressive racial characterizations. In an open-ended manner they manipulate fragmented or borrowed texts, words, and phrases related to race, combining them with photographic or invented imagery to consider the meaning and interpretation of individual identity through the overlapping perspectives of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality.

Sponsors

PICTURE ID: Contemporary African American Works on Paper is sponsored by 2020 Exhibition Program Sponsors Taylor Cadillac and ProMedica with additional support from the Ohio Arts Council.