Our House, from the series "Chickenbones and Watermelon Seeds: The African American Experience as Abstract Art"

Rashid Johnson mines the histories of black Americans, materially and symbolically linking his work to an African American past. This print uses the Vandyke printing process, named for its resemblance in hue to paintings by Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck. Johnson brushed hand-made paper with a photosensitive iron-salt solution, then piled the surface with black-eyed peas and exposed it to light. Other works in the series use chicken bones and watermelon seeds, food staples associated with African American consumption during the centuries of slavery. Johnson’s loaded symbol of home—a small place of comfort within a larger, hostile environment—owes its shape to comfort food.