Glenn Ligon’s ‘1619-2023 (X)’ (2023), poignantly traces the past, present, and future of American race relations. First commissioned as a monumental banner for the Metropolitan Opera’s presentation of ‘X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,’ this powerful work continues the artist’s career-long articulation of abstraction and figuration, which give form to underpinning themes of perception, identity, and race.
Working with black oil stick on a red ground, Ligon assiduously stencilled individual numbers down the entire length of the canvas—systematically recounting each year since the arrival of enslaved Africans in the American colonies in 1619.
The striking black ‘X’ is charged with a multiplicity of meanings: oscillating between letter and symbol, it alludes to Malcom X’s rejection of the surname given to his family, and to the wider associations of the symbol ‘X’ with endings, unknown variables, and the obscuring of meaning. Ligon ends on the year 2023, but the stark red background portends a future still marked by the legacies of slavery.
About the artist
Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) is an artist living and working in New York. Throughout his career, Ligon has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature, and society across bodies of work that build critically on the legacies of modern painting and conceptual art. He earned his BA from Wesleyan University (1982) and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (1985).
Artwork images © Glenn Ligon. Photo: Ron Amstutz
Portrait © Glenn Ligon. Photo: Paul Mpagi Sepuya