Warm Broad Glow

Ligon frequently works with text-based visual art to add layers of meaning to his painting, printmaking, and sculptural works, which often explore and question notions of Black identity. "Warm Broad Glow" is a neon light that recasts the literary reference “Negro Sunshine” out of its original context and into a new, more ambiguous realm. The phrase was used by author Gertrude Stein in her 1909 book "Three Lives" in which she writes of “the earthborn boundless joy of negroes,” and the “wide abandoned laughter that gives the broad glow of negro sunshine.” Ligon painted the front facing sides of the neon tubing black to force a halo of light to emanate from the rear side of the sculpture.