Imani Mason Jordan’s 1:1 is written in response to Ellen Gallagher’s Untitled (2005). Gallagher’s intimate work shows two silhouetted figures etched onto a gold leaf background. The figures, posed as if in conversation, recall nineteenth-century portraits of authors found in narratives of slave emancipation. Jordan’s couplets of words and sounds, pulsing and intimate, fragmentary and accumulative, reflects Gallagher’s own process of gathering, erasing, cutting and collaging materials.

The text was commissioned as part of our exhibition Close Looking: Collection Studies from the Roberts Institute of Art at Cromwell Place, on show from the 22 November to 3 December 2023.

The exhibition is about close looking and reading. Six writers of different backgrounds have been specially commissioned to write responses to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, with texts that span from poetry to storytelling.

Read the text and see the artwork here.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!