Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series |
Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series
Weisman Art Museum
University of Minnesota
333 East River Road
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
(612) 625-9494
2013-02-16 through 2013-05-12
Laylah Ali, Associate Professor of Art
Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Join us for a talk with Laylah Ali on March 7, 2013.
WAM is pleased to present Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series. This is the first time the Greenheads series, created between 1996 and 2005, is being shown as a comprehensive body of work. Forty-three of the exquisitely rendered gouache paintings—from a total of more than eighty—have been gathered from collections here and abroad to chronicle the series’ development.
The figures inhabiting Ali’s works—the Greenheads—are enigmatic, round-headed beings of indeterminate sex and race who inhabit a regimented, dystopian world where odd and menacing, though sometimes strangely humorous, encounters prevail.
This exhibition will allow viewers to examine the evolution of Ali’s series. While the early paintings frequently focus on physically aggressive exchanges between groups of figures, these interactions are later replaced by individuals—alone or in small groups—who witness the prelude to, or aftermath of, a charged encounter. As the series continues, more and more of the figures’ anatomy is pruned away, as if the artist is examining how much can be taken out—such as arms, feet, skin color—while still communicating thought, emotion, and social status.
This exhibition was organized by the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota Department of Art…
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Tags: Laylah Ali, Weisman Art Museum