Laylah Ali: Notes/Drawings/Untitled Afflictions

Laylah Ali: Notes/Drawings/Untitled Afflictions is the newest show of Laylah Ali. She combines her drawings with fragments of conversations she hear, newspaper clippings, things she things, plans for her art and other random things. These excerpts are numbered and laid over the images in a justified centered layout. Her writing is in script and hardly legible at times. The words do not make sense within or outside of context. Her images are mainly grotesque and cartoony. Many of her characters are wearing full-coverage clothing such as burkas and turtlenecks but the genitalia and /or breast are exposed. Many of the men wear burkas over their beards. Tribal imagery blends from many different cultures – notably Native American with lots of feathers and war paint; and Muslim with burkas of all different disciplines. Many of the characters have masks on. Some people are screaming within the burkas, which look like cages. Often their scalps are often peeling off – she details stubble on their hairline for a few inches before the hair starts. There are no titles. Each of the two rooms the show takes up have labels that say “All work Laylah Ali, 2008. Ink, Gauche, colored pencil and ball point pen on paper.” Many of the figures are deformed and missing limbs.
One piece depicts two figures on top of each other. He has scribbles where his penis would be, as well as a ripped pant leg and two leg clamps. She is wearing a headdress and her shirt has a section missing from it, exposing her breasts and belly. She has one leg that is combined in her skirt. His pants override the text in some areas, rendering it illegible. The text is as such:
165) Excuse me, how did you get into here? This is a private meeting.
166) You are my all-time favorite hands down
167) …. alleged truck noises
168)Fear of being splashed by road water, especially with malevolent intent
169) revenge is a bilist of #161
170) such is slashed times, a burnt house, a rowdy feline on a dark street
171) ignore him and ignore him too
172) I find your voice which lapses into a predictable monotone hard to listen to.
These pieces, as is evident, do not make sense and searching for meaning within the web of such absurdity is almost impossible, even for the most prolific art critics.
One of the more interesting pieces was of 2 men with their red gonads drawn in red over their stomachs. The gonad cords extend all the way down their legs, which is absurd. They have hijabs on which cover their mouths. Their chests are bare and they are wearing mini skirts. Because hijab are meant to cover the body, as are turtlenecks – the western version of a burka. The text reads:
151) Paul Wellstone?
152) Unable to recognize and thus defy enemies
153) unlivable
154) pregnant with potentially 7 mice
155) a removed expression on all of your characters
156) stickups
157) Taliban related stress versus Al Qaeida Stress
158) Bright’s Disease
159) Difficulty in denying reflexive image impulses
The image is especially absurd here. Gonads are extending to the feet, they are covering their mouths and noses but not their entire torso and they are wearing mini skirts in combination with their hijab.
Laylah Ali is intentionally confusing us. This show does not make sense. That is the point. We go into a gallery, which is a type of authority, expecting to derive meaning from pieces of art because that is what we do with art. She makes this essentially impossible. The point of this is to negate or at least question the effectiveness of language and imagery to convey messages. She is negating the authority of text and image. The curatorial statement says “ Language, too, is slippery. Like imagery, it relies heavily on convention and context.” Her work is a criticism of these tools as primary forms of communication. Ironic that she uses these tools to convey such a profound idea and she conveys it very effectively. She actually disproves her thesis by how well her point is conveyed.
Through the hybridized characters that blend ethnic imagery, Ali seems to be eliminating borders as she criticizes the communication tool our world uses to mediate between these borders (namely imagery and text). She essentially blends all arbitrary categories and signifiers into a vat of ugly nonsense.
The Decordova Museum August 30th – January 4th, 2009.