Hellshire Beach Towel with Flies
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Object Label
Deana Lawson’s work straddles the staged and the spontaneous, often conflating the ways one perceives the fictions and realities that are contained within a still image. For this piece, the artist was photographing a woman at a beach shack outside Portmore, Jamaica, when her subject suddenly left the frame. Lawson captured the imprint the subject’s body left in the crumpled pink towel and the scarlet recliner, around which several flies lingered. This impromptu depiction of the body through its absence suggests the complexities of representation and the ways diaspora is embodied and experienced in the Caribbean.
Caption
Deana Lawson American, born 1979. Hellshire Beach Towel with Flies, 2013. Pigmented inkjet print, sheet: 35 x 44 5/8 in. (88.9 x 113.3 cm) mount: 35 x 44 5/8 x 1/8 in. (88.9 x 113.3 x 0.3 cm) frame: 35 3/4 × 45 1/2 × 1 3/4 in. (90.8 × 115.6 × 4.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL, in honor of Arnold Lehman, 2015.17. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Image courtesy of the artist, CUR.2015.17_Lawson_photograph.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Hellshire Beach Towel with Flies
Date
2013
Medium
Pigmented inkjet print
Classification
Dimensions
sheet: 35 x 44 5/8 in. (88.9 x 113.3 cm) mount: 35 x 44 5/8 x 1/8 in. (88.9 x 113.3 x 0.3 cm) frame: 35 3/4 × 45 1/2 × 1 3/4 in. (90.8 × 115.6 × 4.4 cm)
Signatures
Lower right verso, in graphite
Credit Line
Gift of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL, in honor of Arnold Lehman
Accession Number
2015.17
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
Can you tell me about this one?
Deana Lawson is a Brooklyn artist but has photographed across the world. This one is so mysterious! It makes us think about a person or a body without actually seeing that person/body.The artist was visiting a beach in Jamaica that's popular with locals rather than tourists. She asked to photograph a woman who was watching TV on this cot/mat in a nearby beach shack. Then the woman excused herself and left, and Lawson noticed the imprint of the woman's body on the towel, and the marks of her sweat, and the flies that started to gather there (in the heat!). This ended up being the photo that she used from that day.So it was an impromptu moment, not something staged, the artist liked to remember how this happened!Very interesting. I keep going back to look at it. Almost as if I expect the woman to appear back on the towel!I like that! It's like a picture of absence the person just got up and could come back at any moment, right?
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