Sligh, Clarissa T.: Home

Limited edition of 1000 copies, signed and numbered by the artist. Art Library has copy 493. "This book evolved from a project for which I folded origami cranes from pages of white supremacist books for the exhibition, 'Speaking volumes: transforming hate' ... The process of making this book came later. I was trying to look at what it was like for me to turn hateful words into a beautiful art object. What actually evolved from that exploration helped me understand more fully the many levels of oppression and violence at the intersections of race, gender, class and sexual orientation ... We make decisions about who gets to have rights and who is marginalized in our society. From the place I now stand, I can see the courage and strength of my grandmother and mother and the path they made for me. I ask the viewer to question her or his perceptions about history, reality, identity and voice" — Foreword.

"In this diary-like artist's book, Sligh recounts a trip to Japan through a thoughtfully constructed montage of photography, texts, and abstract gestural paintings. In personal and poetic musings, the author ponders her relationship to Japanese culture, both as a first time visitor and as an African American woman"--Artist's website.

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A bookwork, consisting of one cardboard sheet accordion folded to form various views of a house, with a poem printed on accordion folded cards which unfold to form a stairway in front of the picture on each page. / Cover title. / Signed: Edition of 50, Clarissa T. Sligh, 1988.

"Wrongly Bodied narratives a female to male transition that acquires even greater poignancy when contextualized alongside reflections on cross-dressing and racial passing as necessary strategies for survival. Juxtaposed with an epic narrative of African-American self-fashioning, the textured portraits of Jake, his partners, and his support group bring sharply into view the uses of embodiment in the quest for freedom and fulfillment. ... Clarissa Sligh examines this culture's greatest persistent taboos--gender, race and identity. Historic heroism is melded with contemporary chutzpah, likening external enslavement with internal entrapment, all woven together. Wrongly Bodied is a long overdue critical and artistic investigation of self-determination, free will, identity politics, and the role of the artist."--Back cover.