Advance Clarion Vol 14: Julius Eastman and Glenn Ligon: Evil Nigger

Special advance release copies of Clarion Vol: 14, The first one hundred purchases come with an edition of What Do You Think of When You See the Title Evil Nigger? zine.

The book is available for purchase at the gallery and can be ordered online.

Curator’s Note by Ebony L. Haynes
Texts by Hilton Als, Jace Clayton, and Krithika Varagur
Annotations by Theaster Gates
Conversation with Glenn Ligon, Emmanuel Olunkwa, and Lorna Simpson

The fourteenth title in the Clarion series explores the work of the composer Julius Eastman and the artist Glenn Ligon, who use structure and repetition to shape compositions and make works that engage with history, language, and cultural memory.

Eastman’s music accumulates through cycles of echoes and variation, creating shifts in tone, movement, and intensity. His work foregrounds sound’s physicality, immersing the listener in evolving rhythms and harmonies that expand minimalism’s limits. Ligon similarly treats text as both image and meaning, using stenciling, neon, and coal dust to manipulate legibility. Language emerges and recedes through surface and texture, inviting sustained engagement with form and perception.

With a curator’s note by Ebony L. Haynes, this issue features texts by Krithika Varagur, Jace Clayton, and Hilton Als, with annotations by Theaster Gates. Varagur examines the historical and cultural legacies that inform Eastman and Ligon’s work, while Clayton explores the sonic and structural innovations in Eastman’s compositions. Als offers a personal and critical meditation on Ligon’s and Eastman’s practices, language, and the ways meaning is shaped through repetition and materiality. The volume also includes a conversation between Glenn Ligon, Emmanuel Olunkwa, and Lorna Simpson in which Ligon and Simpson reflect on their practices, artistic trajectories, and the structures shaping the art world.