“"Oceans of Love”: A Review of Hilton Als’ God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin

Abstract

Leah Mirakhor1 View Less 1 Yale University “Oceans of Love” A Review of Hilton Als’ God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin in James Baldwin Review DOI: https://doi.org/10.7227/JBR.5.11 Online publication date: 01 Sep 2019 Number: Volume 5: Issue 1 OPEN ACCESS (FREE) DOWNLOAD PDF RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS ABSTRACT / EXCERPT PDF This essay reviews Hilton Als’ 2019 exhibition God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin at the David Zwirner Gallery. The show visually displays Baldwin in two parts: “A Walker in the City” examines his biography and “Colonialism” examines “what Baldwin himself was unable to do” by displaying the work of contemporary artists and filmmakers whose works resonate with Baldwin’s critiques of masculinity, race, and American empire. Mirakhor explores how Als’ quest to restore Baldwin is part of a long and deep literary and personal conversation that Als has been having since he was in his teens, and in this instance, exploring why and how it has culminated via the visual, instead of the literary. As Mirakhor observes, to be in the exhibit is not to just observe how Als has formed and figured Baldwin, but to see how Baldwin has informed and made Als, one of our most lyrical and impassioned contemporary writers and thinkers.

Keywords

• hilton als
• james baldwin
• art
• twinship
• beauford delaney
• kara walker
• the devil finds work
• the fire next time
• david zwirner
• ja'tovia gary