Laylah Ali’s show both confounds and mesmerizesPosted in Articles, Arts, Media Archive, United States on 2012-12-06 00:40Z by Steven |
Laylah Ali’s show both confounds and mesmerizes
The Boston Globe
2012-02-19
Sebastian Smee, Art Critic
Laylah Ali is an artist to reckon with. Any opportunity to see her work should not be missed, and for the next two weeks, the Jaffe-Friede Gallery, a small college gallery a short walk from the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, is offering just such an opportunity.
Born in 1968, Ali grew up in Buffalo and lives in Williamstown. She has been an artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College this winter. But the current show of drawings in pencil and black ink is the fruit of an earlier period. All were made between 2005 and 2007.
They show Ali’s inimitable cast of two-dimensional characters, many of them missing arms and other anatomical parts, some of them solo, others in groups of two or three. They are of indeterminate sex and indeterminate race. But all have extra features – strange encumbrances that resemble humps, hoods, headdresses, horns, turbans, goggles, burkas, and beards…
Read the entire review here.