Mystic Parallax is the first major monograph by rising interdisciplinary artist Awol Erizku.

Working across photography, film, video, painting, and installation, his work references and re-imagines African American and African visual culture, from hip hop vernacular to Nefertiti, while nodding to traditions of spirituality and Surrealism. This comprehensive monograph spans Erizku’s career, blending his studio practice with his work as an in-demand editorial photographer working regularly for the New Yorker, New York magazine, Time, and GQ, among others, and features his conceptual portraits of Black cultural icons, such as Solange, Amanda Gorman, and Michael B. Jordan. As Erizku recently told the New York Times, “It’s important for me to create confident, powerful, downright regal images of Black people.”

Featuring essays by critically acclaimed author Ishmael Reed, curator Ashley James, and writer Doreen St. Félix, and interviews with the artist by Urs Fischer and Antwaun Sargent, Mystic Parallax is a luminous and arresting testament to the artist’s tremendous power and originality.

Copublished by Aperture and The Momentary

 

Awol Erizku (born in Ethiopia, 1988) lives and works in Los Angeles. He graduated from Cooper Union in 2010 and received his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2014. Erizku has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, Arkansas; Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto; Ben Brown Gallery, Hong Kong; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Gagosian, New York; and FLAG Art Foundation, New York.

Related items