Glenn Ligon

Self Portrait #7
1996

Rear view of a bald person's head and upper shoulders against a dark background, with a slight highlight on the curvature of the skull.

Rear view of a bald person's head and upper shoulders against a dark background, with a slight highlight on the curvature of the skull.

Not on view

Date
1996

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Screenprint on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 48 × 40 1/8 × 1 1/2in. (121.9 × 101.9 × 3.8 cm)

Accession number
2012.105

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist

Rights and reproductions
© Glenn Ligon

API
artworks/38087

Audio

Glenn Ligon, Self-Portraits, 1996

In Human Interest and Glenn Ligon: AMERICA

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Glenn Ligon, Self-Portraits, 1996

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Narrator: In these self-portraits, Ligon refuses to look directly out at us. The images, silk-screened onto canvas with thick enamel ink, are dark and grainy. Curator Scott Rothkopf.
Scott Rothkopf: He's both inhabiting the mug shot but then sort of undoing it by turning his head away from us and showing us only the back. It wouldn't be very useful in a police lineup or a criminal suspect picture. And I think that that tension, and that kind of resistance, is a real part of the work and its political interest.
And, you know, this is part of systems for law enforcement in this country, which black men are certainly more obviously made the target of than any other population. And I think Glenn is, in a way, responding to and resisting that.

Exhibitions

Glenn Ligon
40 works in the collection

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