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Since 2007, the year of the earliest painting in this exhibition, Sherald has painted the skin of her subjects in grisaille, using shades of gray rather than naturalistic brown tones—a strategy she devised to de-emphasize viewers’ exclusive focus on her subjects’ race and instead draw attention to their individuality and interiority.
The props that appear in many of Sherald’s early works allude to her interests in film, magical realism, the fantastic, and the ways in which objects can invoke personality or narrative. Whether a ragdoll, a unicorn hobbyhorse, or a mysteriously floating toy schooner, the objects Sherald selects lend these early works a dreamlike quality, undermining straightforward readings of the figures while offering open-ended interpretive possibilities.
The Rabbit in the Hat, 2009
Amy Sherald, The Rabbit in the Hat, 2009. Oil on canvas, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. (137.16 × 109.22 × 6.35 cm). Green Family Art Foundation, courtesy Adam Green Art Advisory. © Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Christina Hussey