Deana Lawson's Edge Control Uses Surveillance Images to Examine Race and Beauty at Gagosian
Deana Lawson's latest photography exhibition, Edge Control, is currently displayed at Gagosian in New York City. This show utilizes surveillance images from beauty supply stores to explore themes of power and identity. Lawson's work is influenced by bell hooks's essay, The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, which discusses the traumatic history of Black individuals' experiences with looking since the era of slavery. hooks notes that Black people faced severe consequences, including lynching, for daring to look back at their oppressors. Despite these dangers, they resisted by covertly observing white individuals and their environments, challenging the notion that the white gaze defines reality. During a visit to Edge Control, this analysis sparked deep reflection.
Key facts
- Edge Control is Deana Lawson's latest photography exhibition.
- The exhibition is at Gagosian in New York City.
- Lawson uses beauty supply store surveillance images in the work.
- The exhibition explores power and personhood through race and beauty.
- bell hooks's essay The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators discusses Black people's traumatic relationship to looking since slavery.
- hooks notes that Black people were historically punished, including by lynching, for looking back at those who subjugate them.
- hooks writes that Black people rebelled by secretly looking at white people and their surroundings.
- hooks writes that we can 'interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see.'
Entities
Artists
Institutions
- Gagosian
- Kodak
- Pennsylvania State University
- Rhode Island School of Design
- Hugo Boss Prize
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
- MoMA PS1
- High Museum of Art
- Paris Photo
- Aperture
- New York Art Life
Locations
- New York City
- United States
- New York
- Brooklyn
- Americas
- Africa
- Boston
- Atlanta
- Europe
- Asia
- West 24th Street
- Upper West Side