Despite taking on many influences from pop culture and comic strips, the work of Ali is becomes something quite different for the seriousness of its message, for the situations and the strength of the characters: soldiers and prisoners, doctors and patients, slaves and masters illustrated in the panels which follow one after another to narrate the story. Together, they put across the Ali’s major themes: group and individual identity, politics and power, race and social class.
Themes which are important but frozen in a surreal representational technique half way between a cartoon and a naïve painting.
14.3.2002 – 21.5.2002
Projects 75: Laylah Ali
http://www.moma.org
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