Sligh, Clarissa

American, b. 1939

BiographyClarissa Sligh makes photographs, installations, and artist books that layer photography with text, painting, and collage to weave together the cultural, personal, political, and historical. Her hybrid works are ongoing investigations of the complexities of identity, particularly as they relate to universal concepts of memory and history. She explores said themes through the lens of her lived experience as a Black woman, often returning to interrogations of racial and gender stereotypes. Passages, Family 3 (2002), in the Museum of Contemporary Photography permanent collection, composites black-and-white photographs with a colorful painted background. A zoomed out, nearly abstracted image of weapons is shown alongside a portrait of a Black family with their son in a military uniform. It speaks to the violence of war generally, as well as the unique experience of being Black in the military.

Clarissa Sligh holds a Bachelor’s in Mathematics (1961) from Hampton University, a BA and MFA in Visual Arts from Howard University (1972, 1999), and an MBA from the Wharton School (1973). In 1955, Sligh was a lead plaintiff of a school desegregation case. She cites this experience as a major catalyst of her interest in complicated, transformative change. Sligh worked for NASA until 1987, when she left to pursue art full time. She collaborated with artists Faith Ringgold and Margaret Gallegos to co-find the Coast-to-Coast National Women Artists of Color Project which travelled exhibitions of Black women artists across the United States from 1988 to 1996. Sligh has published over ten artists' books since the late 1980s and has received awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1998); International Center of Photography (2001); and others. Her work is in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, New York; Smithsonian National African American Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and various others.