“I think the question of readability and unreadability projected onto a body is an experience all of us have to think about and understand,” the artist Glenn Ligon has reflected. Touching on themes of legibility and identity, the artworks in this gallery pose the question: What roles do desire and history play in how we understand and recognize each other?
Drawing from literary texts, personal narratives, and references from the past, the artists on view here transform their sources to consider the promise of human relationships and reflect on the pain of fraught histories— particularly around Blackness. These acts of transformation open up a spectrum of experiences, as well as invite viewers to bring their own desires to the experience of looking. “What Black people have always done is taken what’s there and turned it,” Ligon has said. “Taking something and making it joyous.”
Organized by Lanka Tattersall, Laurenz Foundation Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Curatorial Affairs, and Gee Wesley, former Curatorial Associate, Department of Media and Performance.
![Kenturah Davis. Contending with Contingency I (detail). 2021. Carbon pencil, pencil, and blind debossing on nine sheets of paper, 132 × 81" (335.3 × 205.7 cm). Printer: [debossing] The Lowercase Printshop, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Pamela and David Hornik](/d/assets/W1siZiIsIjIwMjUvMDcvMjgvNmhsN2xvbmNwaV9TY3JlZW5zaG90XzIwMjVfMDdfMjhfYXRfOS4zMC41NF9BTS5wbmciXSxbInAiLCJjb252ZXJ0IiwiLXF1YWxpdHkgOTAgLXJlc2l6ZSAxNTV4MTEwXiAtZ3Jhdml0eSBDZW50ZXIgLWNyb3AgMTU1eDExMCswKzAiXV0/Screenshot%202025-07-28%20at%209.30.54%E2%80%AFAM.png?sha=3271e17fc22597bf)
