Take My Hand

2018

Take My Hand, 2018. D'Angelo Lovell Williams (American, b. 1992). Inkjet print; image: 126.7 x 84.6 cm (49 7/8 x 33 5/16 in.); paper: 131.5 x 89.5 cm (51 3/4 x 35 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, L. E. Holden Fund 2020.281 © D’Angelo Lovell Williams Touch—black flesh meeting black flesh—is a central theme in Lovell Williams’s work. Here, a pair of male arms reaches from outside the frame to take hold of another man. While contact is established and cherished—their hands clasp each other—the work is also about self-love. Close looking reveals that the hand caressing the face is the man’s own. D’Angelo Lovell Williams believes that “discovering the variations of intimacy is important for Black and queer people because that looks so different for many of us.”