Clarissa Sligh
Clarissa T. Sligh is an African-American book artist and photographer based in Asheville, North Carolina. At age 15, she was the lead plaintiff in a school desegregation case in Virginia. In 1988, she became a co-founder of Coast-to-Coast: A Women of Color National Artists' Project, which focused on promoting works completed by women of color.
Clarissa Sligh has received many awards including and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman, the International Center for Photography’s Infinity Award, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of Women in th Arts(NMWA), and the Walker Art Center in Minneaplois, MN among many others.
Learn more at https://clarissasligh.com/
Run
1991
screen print
edition:30
image: 28"h X 20"w
6 colors on Rives BFK
Run (1991) combines elements of fear and flight. The inane early reading text "run Dick run" and Black children reference challenging personal and political realities. Ku Klux Klan members run as if transversing an ancient Greek vase. The sacred vessel form may shape fear, hold hope or protection. It may offer a connection with the clay of the earth or contain sexual meaning.
Devastated (1990) incorporates a handwritten text with photos and drawings and lists of words. These sometimes appear with hand coloring Sligh added at a later date.
During the summer of 1992, Sligh returned to Art Awareness with Susan Spencer Crowe and Barbara Takenaga and she produced a powerful series of screen prints in small editions. These address the economics and history of slavery in America:
Whose Blood questions perceptions of humanity, heritage, and identity.
Virginia Estate sizes up long unacknowledged pieces of George Washington's legacy.
Revolt describes the history of slave revolts and details the results of cruel punishment.
In Trade Routes, Clarissa's own image looks at the slave trade pictured in symbols and recounted history.
The Unknown World maps the power factors in a timeline of financial relationships.
