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Glenn Ligon

b. 1960

Glenn Ligon is a conceptual artist who is known particularly for his work with text. In 1989, he used text from African American female author Zora Neale Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me” in his artworks and it established his practice of using text in work. He would also use text by James Baldwin and jokes by Richard Pryor. The words are stenciled onto the canvas with paint by hand. Later on, Ligon would use neon to display words like “America” and “negro sunshine.”

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