Lyle Ashton Harris

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Lyle Ashton Harris (born 1965) is an American artist who has developed a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation art, and performance art.

Harris' books comment on societal norms of sexuality and ethnicity, as well as exploring his own identity as a queer, black man.

Early life

Harris, a Bronx boy, was mainly raised by his chemistry professor mother Rudean after she divorced Harris's father, who lived between New York City and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Harris has portrayed the effects of his father's absence as a major influence on his personal and emotional growth, which will later be shown through some of his works, including his brother Thomas Allen Harris' collaborations. Harris and his brother were taken to an English-speaking Swahili academy when they arrived in Dar Es Salaam. Harris argued that it was crucial to his growth as both an artist and a black man in a world where black people were in charge of power. He praised his time in Tanzania as it was a drastic contrast to the New York City academy.

Harris spent a large portion of his childhood with his grandparents, including his maternal grandmother Joella, who has been included in his artwork, and his grandfather, Greater Bethel AME Church, who inspired many of Harris' works. In addition, his grandfather had a large photograph archive, which may have ties to Harris' later experimentation with photography in his art.

Harris and his brother began to do drag on the weekends, in which they would appear in the hallway of their mother's house. The brothers were allowed to experiment with gender and their own personal sexual identity, which they said is crucial to their artistic growth. Harris experimented with color and various aspects of color in addition to playing with gender and fame. There was a revival in the African American community in which African history, exploration of African roots began to influence style and domestic culture as a youth in the 1970s. Harris used color to connect himself and his art to these roots, as many in his neighborhood did at the time of his youth.

Academia and early works

Harris originally planned to attend Wesleyan University with the intended major of Economics. During his second year there, he went to Amsterdam to visit his brother who was living there at the time. Harris discovered in Amsterdam, Allan Sekula's book "Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photographs" that he believes has dramatically changed his views of self-development, which has changed the course of his life. Harris returned to the United States and spent the next semester wandering through NYC's 1980s black clubbing scene. He took art classes, moved to Wesleyan, came out as queer, and switched to art. Harris earned his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1988 and attended the National Graduate Photography Seminar at the Tisch School of the Arts. Harris joined the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1992, which was later on.

According to art critic Maximiláno Duron, an awakening of self-realization within Harris sparked his first work, titled "Americas" between 1987 and 1988. Harris dresses in wigs and wears whiteface in "Americas," a black and white photography collection in which Harris dresses in wigs and wears whiteface. Scholars, Kwame Appiah, and Cassandra Coblentz view "Americas" as Harris' discovery of both his voice as an artist and as a man, as well as combating blackface in reverse. Harris went on to attend the California Institute of the Performing Arts, and he identifies himself as one of the few students of color on campus. After receiving criticism from a white audience that his work was misunderstood by a white audience, he created a work of art that would capture curiosity. This work was by Harris in a leopard bodysuit with a derogatory word referring to homosexuals painted in red lipstick at the top of the page. Harris says he used this piece to show his identity and regain control over it in a way that nobody could comprehend.

Harris' experience at CalArts influenced his sculpture titled "Constructs." Constructs extended the concepts of his previous work "Americas" as he attempted to define what it means to be a queer black man and emphasized the link between sexuality and race. He mainly dressed in minstrel costume and used whiteface to criticize the country's static features of culture, despite the white majority's hegemony.

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