Scratching the surface: Artist Laylah Ali explores the social dynamics that lie beyond appearancesPosted in Articles, Arts, Biography, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2010-10-08 03:46Z by Steven |
Scratching the surface: Artist Laylah Ali explores the social dynamics that lie beyond appearances
Boston Globe
2008-08-29
Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent
WILLIAMSTOWN – Laylah Ali doesn’t let many people into her studio.
“It’s a private space,” the artist says, welcoming a visitor. “It’s like being in my brain. I’m inviting you into my private brain space – the chaos and the mess.”
As far as chaos goes, this isn’t bad. In the basement of a building on the outskirts of the Williams College campus, where Ali teaches art, an airy studio is filled with white illustrator’s tables. Colored pencils and squat bottles of ink clutter the tables. But what catches the eye are the drawings Ali has tacked to the white walls with pushpins: Portraits, made in her signature cartoon style, of haunted figures with garish headdresses, scarification, and false beards, and smaller drawings that feature ruminative lists with oddly adorned figures drawn over them…
…Growing up in Buffalo as the daughter of an African-American father and a white mother, Ali attuned herself early to social dynamics and covert aggression. The family lived in an all-white neighborhood.
“I was the only black kid in my school,” Ali says. “I’ve been able to negotiate different social places because of that. . . . More people are seeing this now because of Barack Obama, but there have always been biracial people in the US, with the ability to move between these worlds and notice what’s different and what’s not different.
“I developed heightened powers of observation not just from curiosity,” she adds, “but for survival.”
As a child, the artist saw implicit judgment many places, and it wasn’t always black and white.
“It’s not just race. It’s also class,” Ali points out. “My mom’s family had come from some money. It was gone, but they still had the idea of what it’s like to have nice silver, a nice oriental rug. They had an aspiration from what they had lost.
“Dad’s family was from the farming Mississippi South. He grew up working the land. I keep asking him questions and finding out more things. He walked five miles to school and had no electricity at home.”
“My family is very American,” she sums up…
Read the entire article here.