The implicit violence, frozen narratives, and pared-down, comic-book aesthetic of Layla Ali's gouache-and-ink drawings present an ambiguous place where civilization and psychology meet. Psycho-political situations are suggested, but rarely acted out, by figures dressed in costumes derived from superhero wear and sports gear, garb reminiscent of outfits worn by the KKK, the Pope, and Coptic priests. Who are they? What are they doing? Their gender neutralized by unisex costumes, their race neutralized by green-colored skin, Ali has created a tight, contained, strangely compelling hand-drawn world in which questions are unanswerable, narratives refuse to go forward, and yet everything is eerily perfect.

Laylah Ali

Arts & Photography

Wise, Suzanne

Ali, Laylah

History & Criticism

ICA Boston

<p>Riddled with mistranslations, misappropriations, and malapropisms, Suzanne Wise imagines the world as a postmodern police state under attack: tables turn, tea carts explode, floorboards melt, ceilings sail off. Like the rebel girls in her poem "The Ghetto of Blasphemy," Wise takes aim at the official rhetoric of patriarchy and reveals gender to be a tattered assemblage pieced together from a looted past. Wise charts the self through an inquiry into language, moving from World War II to a future where victim, oppressor, and bystander pose as the same person. Darkly comic, deeply feminist, The Kingdom of the Subjunctive is the last territory, an if-only border zone where doubt and desire are the laws of the land.</p>

The Kingdom of the Subjunctive

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Alice James Books

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Books by Wise, Suzanne