Glenn Ligon’s enduring fascination with the written word is
powerfully expressed in his most recent series of untitled prints, which
reproduce pages from his personal copy of James Baldwin’s 1953 essay “Stranger
in the Village,” a seminal text on black identity. Ligon used “Stranger in the
Village” as the basis for numerous works, so that finally his copy of Baldwin’s
essay reflected the history of his own studio practice: pages were annotated,
splattered with paint, stained with oil, and folded and torn.

Ligon scanned and printed these studio artefacts on a monumental
scale, capturing each nuance of wear and tear. Untitled is the third page in the series, which describes not only
Baldwin’s experience of encountering the outcasts of a Swiss village, but also
his own experience as an outsider, “as much a stranger today as I was the first
day I arrived.” Standing in front of Untitled,
the viewer has a double consciousness that encompasses both Baldwin’s
passionately engaged narrative and Ligon’s presence as an equally engaged
reader and artist.