Artist-in-residence Laylah Ali's ink drawings displayed in the Jaffe-Friede Gallery in the Hopkins Center depict power struggles between cartoon-style characters that resemble aboriginal and Native American art. Ali, an art professor at Williams College, has arranged 20 pieces from her "Typology" series, which she completed between 2005 and 2007, for exhibition from Jan. 10 through March 4.
Ali is best known for her "Greenheads" series, a group of high-color, politically-minded paintings that the artist created in the late 1990s and early 2000s. "Typology," however, is in some ways a departure from her normal methodology and style of work.
"It was a spontaneous kind of automatic drawing to produce these works," Ali said. "If it worked, it worked. For me, it was really kind of loose."
Ali said she usually painstakingly plans and sketches before she starts to paint, an approach she did not take with "Typology."
"I didn't do any planning or drawing ahead of time," Ali said. "I was making it up as I went along with these. I would start with an idea in my head, and I just kind of went with it."
She did not use any particular models or examples for the people featured in her portraits or for the patterns that she drew, but rather created the images entirely from her own imagination. The works currently on display in the Jaffe-Friede Gallery represent her most successful works in the series, according to Ali.
Many critics and viewers have asked Ali if her work is influenced by aboriginal patterns or Native American art, but the artist said that if her work evokes this feeling, it is not entirely intentional.
"When you have your eyes open, and [you are] looking at art in different places, you are going to pick up those things, either consciously or subconsciously," Ali said. "I did not think of it in that specific way, but I'm certainly aware that it has these resonances. I'm not looking at source material, but I think it's just that I've picked up things over time."
"Typology," like the "Greenheads," features cartoon-style figures, but the works are done in black ink on Bristol vellum white paper as opposed to the high-intensity watercolor paintings of her "Greenheads" series.
"Generally, these are ink, with a focus on the intense crosshatching patterns, which are just crosshatching upon crosshatching," Ali said. "On some of the larger works, I went over some of the darkest areas with a really light black colored pencil to intensify the effect, but it's still very slight just to give it a kind of push towards a blacker black."
Her inclination to not use color in "Typology" was mostly a result of trying to move away from the way she usually works, she said. Working with a single instrument to spread the ink was also in some ways freeing, as she was not worried about the process of mixing paints or combining colors. Instead, she had more free-form control over how she worked with the space on her paper.
"I paint with a lot of color, so I just wanted to not use the element of color and see how the meaning in them changed or what kinds of different situations showed up in the drawings rather than the paintings," Ali said. "I think there is a kind of freedom of movement employing one instrument in different ways. I think it's a little bit more flexible."
For the larger works in the series, Ali did some preliminary planning in pencil before ever putting ink to the paper. Such planning allowed her to more efficiently utilize the negative space and not interfere with any shapes that she liked by over-drawing, according to Ali.
The works on display in the Jaffe-Friede Gallery are less playful in appearance than "Greenheads," despite the similarities of the two series. Some of the characters are missing limbs and communicate in what appear to be hostile exchanges of power, dominance or violence.
In one drawing, a younger, smaller figure presses the welts on the back of a larger figure that is hunched over. The hunched figure appears to be in pain as a result, but it is unclear what role the younger cartoon is playing in the exchange. This is the kind of ambiguity that Ali tries to maintain in her works.
"I'm interested in how you can really pare down a power relationship, how you speak about larger power dynamics," Ali said. "I think that when I make these things, I tend to go for multiple narratives. The person who stands in front of it should be able to come up with different ideas."
Ali said that this goal abstaining from creating a single narrative is what distinguishes her work from illustration or political cartoon.
"It's a little more open-ended," she said. "If I were illustrating a definitive idea, that would be something where you could look at it and respond. Or in a political cartoon, you know what everything represents. You as the viewer have to do a lot more work and give a lot more of yourself into the interpretation."
Ali's simplified, cartoonish style emerged while she was in graduate school in response to her peers' in-class critiques on her technical competency and their failure to focus on the conflicts she was trying to illuminate through her art, according to Ali.
"I would draw nooses and things that were kind of disturbing, but if it was really well-drawn, people would focus on how well-drawn the rope was," Ali said. "That would be what we talked about, instead of what was happening in the drawing. So I made the decision that I would try to eliminate that kind of discussion from the work."
The hardest part in underplaying the formal aspects of her work was the technical process that then went into accomplishing this goal, Ali said.
"If you want to get a beautiful, flat blue on a painting, for example, you have to work very hard to get a blue that leaves no trace of your hand," she said. "I think, strangely, I've spent more of my career dealing with formal aspects. They're inextricable at some point."
Although her figures are simplified, she still tries to engage in a dialogue with the viewer, Ali said.
"The concept that's happening with my characters isn't going to be convincing unless I invest in how they're made," Ali said. "Sometimes if you don't want someone to recognize something, you have to work even harder at it."
Ali will spend most of her time as the artist-in-residence working on her upcoming work, a series of 12-15 paintings that she is currently in the process of sketching, she said. She will also spend some of her time working with students in upper-level classes throughout the term.
