abstract photographic image with vertical rainbow lines at center and pink and blue cloudlike forms with white spots of light of various sizes--may be distorted image of outer space with gas cloud and stars?; small color photo print resembling Polaroid image attached to outside of glazing on left side above center--image of four Black girls on a bench (pew?) with girl at right turning toward a figure in blue seated on bench behind them; black and gilt frame

Messier 81, Return of the Dove, 2018

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Lawson’s photographic assemblage frames the collapsing edges of a blue-and-pink galaxy, riven by the seam of the book from which she scanned the original image. At the far left, near a prismatic ribbon of light that splices the universe from top to bottom, a small color snapshot of young Black churchgoers seated in a pew has been stuck into the work’s gold frame. The confluence of these disparate elements is intentional: conflating the everyday with the cosmic, centering the most humble of photographic images—a digital scan of a digital scan—in a manner alluding to the Holy Spirit (often represented as a dove in Renaissance art), Lawson creates a universe of recovered meaning and spiritual significance. The scale of the galaxy/dove, and its proximity to the young people in the snapshot, illuminates the important relationship between the two; as a visualization of the Black diaspora, the galaxy is at once a metaphor of dispersal and connection as well as an image of divine intervention and protection.

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Details
Title
Messier 81, Return of the Dove
Artist Life
born 1979
Role
Artist
Accession Number
2020.44.2
Curator Approved

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abstract photographic image with vertical rainbow lines at center and pink and blue cloudlike forms with white spots of light of various sizes--may be distorted image of outer space with gas cloud and stars?; small color photo print resembling Polaroid image attached to outside of glazing on left side above center--image of four Black girls on a bench (pew?) with girl at right turning toward a figure in blue seated on bench behind them; black and gilt frame
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