Henry Taylor: B Side
Oct 4, 2023–Jan 28, 2024
The dress, ain't me
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Taylor is the youngest of eight children in a large extended family whose members—from his mother, father, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins to his own three children—appear frequently in his work. Taylor's parents moved from the East Texas cotton town of Naples to Oxnard, California, in 1944, making them among the millions of Black Americans who left the segregated South in search of greater economic opportunities and social freedoms during the post-World War II phase of the Great Migration. Their experiences, and the stories he heard from them growing up, instilled in Taylor a sensitivity to the cultural and political currents affecting Black Americans. As with his other works, Taylor paints his family from memory, in-person sittings, and snapshots.
Henry Taylor, i'm yours, 2015
Henry Taylor, i'm yours, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 73 1/8 × 74 1/4 in. (185.74 × 188.6 cm). Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; acquired through the generosity of the Acquisitions Circle. © Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Sam Kahn
Taylor based this work on a photograph of himself and his son. While creating the painting, he added a portrait of his daughter in the background. By filling the foreground with an imposing, closely cropped image of himself assertively staring at the viewer, and staggering the figures of his children as if they are receding into space, Taylor creates an unconventional family portrait whose ambiguous title, i’m yours, raises the question of who is being possessed and by whom.