“Alien Script,” a series of drawings by author Walter Mosley, will be on display, for 24-hour public viewing, from June 10 through August 1 at NYU Kimmel Center’s Windows Gallery.
The outdoor exhibition, which includes 18 images selected from nine of Mosley’s notebooks, is accompanied by the first paragraph of the writer’s 1990 novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, in nine different languages. It is curated by Lydie Diakhaté and organized by the Institute of African American Affairs at NYU.
“This ‘Alien Script’ has become my bid for art, my exploration in the language(s) of line, form, and color; unruly textures and songs of dark and light,” says Mosley.
“With this exhibition, for the first time, Walter Mosley opens a window on his ‘Monde Imaginaire’ and invites us to share unknown stories and meet with new characters,” explains Diakhaté. “Whether we see Walter Mosley’s drawings as chronicles, short stories, novels, or scripts for a science fiction film, they constitute an unlimited corpus of artwork.”
In “Alien Script,” a whole magical world is discovered--where Mosley’s lines come alive and become roads that lead to streams and fantastic landscapes where strange creatures roam. The viewer embarks on an incredible journey where she/he comes across gladiators of the space, dancers, masters in martial arts, primordial animals, extraterrestrials creatures, or timeless forms. These drawings create their own graphemes and grammars, with boundless significations and subconscious connotations revealing dimensions of doubling and de-doubling between handwriting and language.
Mosley’s more than 40 critically acclaimed books include the major bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into 23 languages and comprises literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Nation, among other publications. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
For more information about the exhibition, call 212.998.2981 or click here.
EDITOR’S NOTE
The Institute of African American Affairs (IAAA) at New York University was founded in 1969 to research, document, and celebrate the cultural and intellectual production of Africa and its diaspora in the Atlantic world and beyond. IAAA is committed to the study of Blacks in modernity through concentrations in Pan-Africanism and Black Urban Studies. For more, click here.
