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The man disguised as night (Anansi #29)

Leasho Johnson

Artwork Details

The man disguised as night (Anansi #29)
2023
Leasho Johnson
charcoal, distemper, watercolor, logwood dye, acrylic, oil, and collage on paper mounted on canvas
52 ¼ x 134 ¼ in. (132.72 x 341 cm)
Museum purchase made possible by Amelia and Eliot Relles, Josh Kaufman and Nicole Israel, and the Anmuth Family. Acquisition proposed by Annika Chinnaiyan (BBA ’26), Alisha Gandhi (BBA ’27), Annika Gill (BBA ’26), Greta Gmazel (BBA ’26), Noelle Powers (BBA ’26), and Liz Tracy (BBA ’26), students of the first Business of Art course.
2025/2.17

On Display

Eleanor Noyes Crumpacker

Tags

Description

The man disguised as night (Anansi #29) invites viewers into an  unsettling space that merges human and non-human, organic and inorganic, delight and repulsion. Partially obscured figures entice us to follow them into the shadows and break through the dense foliage-like matrix that envelops them, while recognizable objects resist interpretation, leaving us perplexed. Leasho Johnson has described his experience of being a queer Black individual—both in Jamaica where he grew up and now in Chicago—as a choreography of self-concealment and transformation. Johnson summons Anansi, a trickster character in West African and African diasporic folklore, to express this way of being in the world. Although he is only a small black spider, Anansi uses deception and creativity to exert great power in society.

Physical Description:

A figure and a still life setting of a table and fruit are obscured by organic shapes of many colors. 

Usage Rights:

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