Created as a Fundraising Edition on the occasion of the 2018 NY Art Book Fair, Comfort with Rage is a 4-color screenprint by artist Laylah Ali. Comfort with Rage is emblematic of the artist’s interest in creating narratives and imagery that question the stability of fixed cultural, racial, and sexual definitions.
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Laylah Ali (b. 1968 in Buffalo, New York) is known for her meticulous gouache works that challenge fixed racial and gender narratives. These small, figurative works demand significant planning and take Ali months to make. The brightly colored scenes, reminiscent of comic book strips, often depict dark subject matter. Ali builds upon this tension by equipping her gender ambiguous figures with both everyday attributes and culturally loaded objects, such as hoods, nooses, and masks. Ali’s work also references hieroglyphics and American Folk Art while remaining fervently situated in the contemporary political discourse. Laylah Ali has received solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, among others. Ali’s work was included in the 2003 Venice Biennale and the 2004 Whitney Biennial.
