Glenn Ligon - Give Us A Poem
2011
Glenn Ligon (b. 1960, Bronx, NY)
Give Us a Poem, 2007
Gift of the artist
After a speech by Muhammad Ali at Harvard University in 1975, a student asked Ali to give the audience a poem. Ali replied, “me, we.” As a star athlete and celebrated spokesman for political awareness in the black community and beyond, Ali imbued those two words with poetic and political meaning that resonated long after the crowd dissipated. Arguably one of the shortest poems ever recited, “me, we” highlighted the intimate relationship between the individual and the community. Here, Ali’s poignant verse is commemorated in a neon installation by Glenn Ligon. Give Us a Poem introduces us to Ligon’s characteristic appropriation of provocative texts and visuals that engage the viewer or spectator in both historical and current discourses on identity and contemporary art.
As a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans media ranging from painting to installation art, Glenn Ligon is noted for introducing relics of black vernacular history into modern forms of visual production. Early in his career, Ligon adorned white canvases with text, such as “I AM A MAN,” which was derived from the placards carried by striking black sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968. Through negating a visual image in favor of text as image, Ligon draws attention to the visual and contextual distance between a declarative statement about identity and the form of visual representation employed to convey the message. In his more recent neon works such as Warm Broad Glow (2005), Ligon appropriates text from a wide-range of prominent writers and community figures including Gertrude Stein and Sojourner Truth to create a new language for critiquing the discourse surrounding identity.
In Give Us a Poem, one in a growing series of Ligon’s neon works, Ali’s poem “me, we” is rendered in black PVC and white-neon, referencing numerous binaries including light and dark, absence and presence and visibility and invisibility. In borrowing the voice of Ali, a man recognized for his verbal dexterity, Give Us a Poem recalls a time when the courage of a few individuals inspired political awareness in an entire community and recontextualizes Ali’s claim that the fate of the individual is inextricably linked to the fate of the community.
Glenn Ligon was born in the Bronx. After receiving his BA from Wesleyan University in 1982, Ligon returned to New York, where he currently lives and works. In 2005, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto organized Glenn Ligon: Some Changes, a traveling mid-career survey of his extensive body of work, including paintings, sculptures, prints, videos and installation works. The exhibition will be on view through the winter of 2007 at Musée d‘Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg. Ligon’s work has also been exhibited in numerous international venues, including the 1993 Whitney Biennial and Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany in 2002.
Give Us a Poem, 2007
Gift of the artist
After a speech by Muhammad Ali at Harvard University in 1975, a student asked Ali to give the audience a poem. Ali replied, “me, we.” As a star athlete and celebrated spokesman for political awareness in the black community and beyond, Ali imbued those two words with poetic and political meaning that resonated long after the crowd dissipated. Arguably one of the shortest poems ever recited, “me, we” highlighted the intimate relationship between the individual and the community. Here, Ali’s poignant verse is commemorated in a neon installation by Glenn Ligon. Give Us a Poem introduces us to Ligon’s characteristic appropriation of provocative texts and visuals that engage the viewer or spectator in both historical and current discourses on identity and contemporary art.
As a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans media ranging from painting to installation art, Glenn Ligon is noted for introducing relics of black vernacular history into modern forms of visual production. Early in his career, Ligon adorned white canvases with text, such as “I AM A MAN,” which was derived from the placards carried by striking black sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968. Through negating a visual image in favor of text as image, Ligon draws attention to the visual and contextual distance between a declarative statement about identity and the form of visual representation employed to convey the message. In his more recent neon works such as Warm Broad Glow (2005), Ligon appropriates text from a wide-range of prominent writers and community figures including Gertrude Stein and Sojourner Truth to create a new language for critiquing the discourse surrounding identity.
In Give Us a Poem, one in a growing series of Ligon’s neon works, Ali’s poem “me, we” is rendered in black PVC and white-neon, referencing numerous binaries including light and dark, absence and presence and visibility and invisibility. In borrowing the voice of Ali, a man recognized for his verbal dexterity, Give Us a Poem recalls a time when the courage of a few individuals inspired political awareness in an entire community and recontextualizes Ali’s claim that the fate of the individual is inextricably linked to the fate of the community.
Glenn Ligon was born in the Bronx. After receiving his BA from Wesleyan University in 1982, Ligon returned to New York, where he currently lives and works. In 2005, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto organized Glenn Ligon: Some Changes, a traveling mid-career survey of his extensive body of work, including paintings, sculptures, prints, videos and installation works. The exhibition will be on view through the winter of 2007 at Musée d‘Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg. Ligon’s work has also been exhibited in numerous international venues, including the 1993 Whitney Biennial and Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany in 2002.
