Lyle Ashton Harris facts for kids

Lyle Ashton Harris (born February 6, 1965) is an American artist. He creates many different kinds of art, including photography, collage, installation art, and performance art. Harris uses his art to talk about ideas of identity and how people see themselves. He explores his own experiences as a Black man through his work.

Early Life and Influences

Lyle Ashton Harris was born in the Bronx, New York. He spent most of his childhood with his mother, Rudean, who was a chemistry professor. They lived between New York City and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Harris has shared that his father's absence had a big impact on him. This experience later showed up in some of his art, especially in projects with his brother, Thomas Allen Harris.

While in Dar Es Salaam, Harris and his brother went to an English-speaking school. Harris felt it was important for him to live in a country where Black people held positions of power. He valued his time in Tanzania because it was very different from the school he attended in New York City.

Family and Art

Harris spent a lot of time with his grandparents. His grandmother, Joella, was a missionary and appeared in some of his art. His grandfather was a treasurer for a church, which also influenced Harris's work. His grandfather also had a large collection of photographs. This might have inspired Harris's later interest in photography.

In the early 1970s, Harris and his brother would often dress up and perform in their mother's hallway. This was a safe place for them to explore different ways of expressing themselves. They felt this was very important for their artistic growth. Harris also experimented with colors in his art. Growing up in the 1970s, many African Americans were exploring their African heritage. Harris used colors to connect his art to these roots.

Education and First Artworks

College Years

Harris first went to Wesleyan University to study Economics. During his second year, he visited his brother in Amsterdam. There, he found a book by Allan Sekula called "Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works." Harris believes this book completely changed his ideas about his future.

He returned to the U.S. and spent time exploring the Black club scene in New York City in the 1980s. He started taking art classes and decided to change his major to art. In 1988, Harris earned his degree in art from Wesleyan University. He later earned a master's degree from the California Institute of the Arts in 1990. He also attended the National Graduate Photography Seminar at the Tisch School of the Arts that same year. In 1992, Harris participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

Early Photo Series

One of Harris's first major works was a black and white photo series called "Americas," created between 1987 and 1988. In this series, Harris dressed in wigs and wore white makeup. Art experts see "Americas" as Harris finding his voice as an artist. He used this work to explore ideas about race and identity.

When Harris was at the California Institute of the Arts, he felt challenged as one of the few students of color. After a professor suggested his work was not understood by a white audience, he created a powerful piece. This artwork showed Harris in a leopard bodysuit with a strong word about identity painted on him. Harris said he used this piece to clearly state who he was.

Exploring Identity

Harris's experiences at CalArts inspired his work called "Constructs." This series continued the ideas from "Americas." He wanted to show what it means to be a Black man and how identity is connected to race. He often dressed in old-fashioned costumes and used white makeup to comment on how culture in the U.S. was often seen through a white perspective.

Art Exhibitions

Whitney Museum Show

Harris's first exhibition-style work was shown in 1992. It was part of a series he created through the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. This collection used the colors of the Pan-African flag (red, black, and green) and featured members of his family. He wanted to show a proud and joyful story of Black life.

Black Male Exhibition

In 1994, Harris had a solo exhibition in New York City. It featured his earlier work, "Constructs," as part of a larger show called "Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art." An educator named Senam Okudzeto described Harris's work as combining his personal story with history. This showed how identity is shaped by politics and culture in the United States.

The Good Life

In the fall of 1994, Harris showed his work The Good Life in New York. This exhibition included large Polaroid photos of his friends and family. One important piece from this show was a series of three photos called "Brotherhood, Crossroads, Etcetera." He created this with his brother, Thomas Allen Harris. This artwork used images to tell a complex story, drawing from ancient African beliefs and personal desires.

Harris continued to explore gender, identity, and race in his art. In 1994, he worked with Renée Cox on a Polaroid piece called The Child. Cox posed as a father figure, and Harris as a mother figure, holding a child. They both looked into the camera. Harris used his signature colors of black, green, red, and yellow. These colors highlighted his connection to his African heritage. Green represented the African race, and red symbolized blood. He also used this color scheme for his project Brotherhood with Thomas Allen Harris.

Billie, Boxers, and Better Days

In 2002, Harris released his photo series called "Billie, Boxers, and Better Days." This series used Polaroid self-portraits. Harris wanted to show how Black people were often seen and how identity is formed by repeated actions. Through these works, Harris showed that he has many ways of defining himself. He even connected himself to Black femininity through the singer Billie Holiday.

Blow Up

In 2004, "Blow Up" was shown at the Rhona Hoffman gallery in Chicago. This was Harris's first public wall collage. The series was based on an image Harris found in 2001 while he was in Rome. He was interested in ideas about race and power in European soccer. A key image for him was a Black man massaging an Italian soccer player's leg.

"Blow Up" includes images that show how race and identity are seen across different cultures and throughout history. This led to three more wall collages made from materials, photos, and items Harris collected. One of these was Blow UP IV (Sevilla), created for an art show in Seville, Spain, in 2006.

Memoirs of Hadrian

In 2002, Harris created "Memoirs of Hadrian," a series of photo collages. These pictures showed a young boxer in a different way. Instead of looking strong and victorious, the boxer appeared tired and hurt. An art critic, Holland Cotter, said the title refers to both the city of Rome and a book about a Roman emperor.

Other Exhibitions and Recognition

In 2010, a book called Excessive Exposure was published. It showed many of Harris's "Chocolate-Colored" portraits. These were made using a special large-format Polaroid camera over ten years.

In 2011, The Studio Museum in Harlem displayed some of these portraits. In 2013, the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University held a solo exhibition of 14 of Harris's works called Accra My Love.

In 2014, Harris was featured in a documentary called Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People. This film was produced by his brother, Thomas Allen Harris. In 2015, he received the David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art. He also spoke at the Contemporary African Art Fair.

Harris also helped organize a group exhibition called Nero su Bianco (Black on White) at the American Academy in Rome in 2015.

His art has been shown in many famous places, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Venice Biennale. His work has also appeared in magazines like New York and The New York Times. Harris has mentioned artists like Caravaggio, Francis Bacon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, and Jean-Michel Basquiat as influences on his work.

Lyle Ashton Harris is represented by the Salon 94 gallery in New York City. He currently lives in New York and is an assistant professor of art at New York University. He used to divide his time between New York and Accra, Ghana.