American conceptual artist Glenn Ligon’s work 'Untitled (I Am A Man)', 1988, references the civil rights protest placard that was carried in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 by striking African-American sanitation workers, and was subsequently taken-up at the Martin Luther King memorial march after the activist’s assassination. ‘Freighted with history’, this work is much more than a straightforward text painting.
Through close examination of Ligon’s career, artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz proposes that Ligon’s ‘Untitled (I Am A Man)’ and other text-based works are both figurative and historical paintings, which explore and confront the themes of language, identity, race and sexuality.
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