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Glenn Ligon

Born, 1960 in New York

Glenn Ligon and Bryon Kim’s Rumble, Young Man, Rumble (#1), 1993 was reproduced in Keith Piper’s Relocating the Remains catalogue, the main text of which was written by Kobena Mercer. The chapter in which Ligon and Kim’s work appears is Anatomies of the Body Politic, Its Central Nervous System: 1991 - 1996.

From the archived Documenta 11 website: www.documenta12.de//archiv/d11/data/english/index.html

“Coming out of an identity conscious generation of American artists from the 1970s and 1980s, concerned with issues of the representation of gender, race and sexuality, Ligon directs attention to the imagery of the gay, black male as an indicator of the conditions of society at large.”

Ligon was one of over 60 artists whose work was included in Afro Modern, a major exhibition that took place at Tate Liverpool in the spring of 2010. The exhibition was accompanied by a major catalogue. Ligon’s work was reproduced on the front of a small visitor guide, issued by Tate Liverpool, that accompanied the exhibition. From the visitor guide:

Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic, 29 January - 25 April 2010

As a port city, Liverpool has played an important role in the millions of journeys back and forth across the Atlantic. The city has been at the heart of cultural exchange for centuries making it the ideal location for Tate’s fascinating new exhibition, Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic.

This thought-provoking exhibition identifies a new, hybrid culture that has arisen from the journeys made by people of Black African descent and is the first exhibition to trace in depth the impact of this new culture on art from the early twentieth century to today.

From Picasso to Man Ray, Kara Walker to Chris Ofili and Ellen Gallagher to Jean Michel Basquiat, this exhibition features a wide variety of artists and offers a fresh and alternative interpretation of their work for a new generation.

The cover of the visitor guide featured Glenn Ligon, Malcolm X [version 2] #1, 2000. The above text was accompanied by small reproductions of Candice Breitz, Ghost Series #4, 1994-6 and Keith Piper, Go West Young Man.