Current must-see shows in the city: KARA WALKER @ Sikkema Jenkins Gallery and GLENN LIGON @ The Whitney Museum.

Two of the most influential modern african american artists. Both deconstruct historic and contemporary codifiers, labels and what it means to be BLACK by taking identity and ancestry and personal history head on - constructing their own libraries of perspective and remimagined ways of responding to collective memory, collective identity, stereotypes, struggle and self awareness.

Both Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon have works that seem to speak directly to one another. They are black and white. Using block letters to make out very startling messages. Block letters recall reassemblage. Bring to mind quilts. Makes me think of diaspora. Visually each block looks like a tomb stone. Kara Walker’s words punch. She recalls ‘im black and beautiful’ sisterhoods of the 70’s. Glenn Ligon’s works feel heavy - as your eye falls from top to bottom the weight of the words feel dramatic - loosing meaning, as they blur to black, and just as you seem to loose meaning when you repeat something over and over again.

Such words would have held little meaning for ancestors who may have been illerterate. But BLACK on WHITE is contagiously understood. Momentum and movement. Steps to a dance.