LAYLAH ALI — Projects 75, MoMA, New York, 2002

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002. Artist’s book. Staple bound, [40] pp., 18.5 × 24.5 cm. Offset printed in colour. Includes original folded brochure.

Published by MoMA on the occasion of Projects 75. Laylah Ali’s first book: a compact comic/artist’s book built from the Greenheads that populate her paintings. Cute, severe, and unstable, the figures move through scenes of violence, costume, authority, and role confusion.

The book borrows the structure of comics — panels, sequence, repetition, colour — but removes the usual narrative supports. No speech, no captions, no clear moral order. Security figures, victims, aggressors, prisoners, bandits, and uniformed bodies appear as interchangeable positions.

The result is deceptively simple: a small MoMA paperback in which violence is processed through graphic clarity and institutional calm. The brochure includes text by Kristin Helmick-Brunet, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings.

Condition: Very good. Light handling wear; minor cover and edge wear consistent with age. Original period item.