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Hellshire Beach Towel with Flies

Deana Lawson

Contemporary Art

Deana Lawson’s work straddles the staged and the spontaneous, often conflating the ways one perceives the fictions and realities that are contained within a still image. For this piece, the artist was photographing a woman at a beach shack outside Portmore, Jamaica, when her subject suddenly left the frame. Lawson captured the imprint the subject’s body left in the crumpled pink towel and the scarlet recliner, around which several flies lingered. This impromptu depiction of the body through its absence suggests the complexities of representation and the ways diaspora is embodied and experienced in the Caribbean.
MEDIUM Pigmented inkjet print
DATES 2013
DIMENSIONS sheet: 35 x 44 5/8 in. (88.9 x 113.3 cm) mount: 35 x 44 5/8 x 1/8 in. (88.9 x 113.3 x 0.3 cm) frame: 35 3/4 × 45 1/2 × 1 3/4 in. (90.8 × 115.6 × 4.4 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Lower right verso, in graphite
COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 2015.17
CREDIT LINE Gift of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL, in honor of Arnold Lehman
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Deana Lawson (American, born 1979). Hellshire Beach Towel with Flies, 2013. Pigmented inkjet print, sheet: 35 x 44 5/8 in. (88.9 x 113.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL, in honor of Arnold Lehman, 2015.17. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Image courtesy of the artist, CUR.2015.17_Lawson_photograph.jpg)
IMAGE overall, CUR.2015.17_Lawson_photograph.jpg. Image courtesy of the artist
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT ©Deana Lawson
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Deana Lawson (American, born 1979). <em>Hellshire Beach Towel with Flies</em>, 2013. Pigmented inkjet print, sheet: 35 x 44 5/8 in. (88.9 x 113.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL, in honor of Arnold Lehman, 2015.17. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Image courtesy of the artist, CUR.2015.17_Lawson_photograph.jpg)