Glenn Ligon was born in New York City, where he is currently based. He earned his BFA from Wesleyan University in 1982 and he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1985. Though he emerged as a painter, Ligon has used text in a wide range of media including prints and neon sculptures since the 1980s. His work explores the rhetoric of American politics and the expectations and conventions for art making, in particular those mandated for black artists. The Whitney Museum presented a retrospective of his work in 2011, and Ligon’s work has appeared widely in contexts ranging from the White House under President Obama to international exhibitions.
“In some ways all the work, . . ., has dealt with issues of loss. Trying to grapple with the implications of being descendant from a people whose beginnings in this country involved the systematic stripping away of everything that was familiar. . . . Cultural translation, . . ., is always involved with loss, the untranslatable, excess meanings, the indecipherable. . . ., I am interested in . . ., the space that is opened up by not communicating.”