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.

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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