AIRMAIL Dec 2020

“Being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven’t conquered yet,” goes a line in Ntozake Shange’s acclaimed 1976 musical, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf. Nearly a half-century later, we still haven’t conquered it. A new exhibition of work by the graphic artist Paul Davis takes steps in that direction, its 32 small digital prints celebrating the legacies of Shange (Davis designed the For Colored Girls… theater poster), Martin Luther King Jr. (Rolling Stone cover, 1988), Duke Ellington (Lincoln Center program, 1998), Ella Fitzgerald (USPS Black Heritage 39-cent stamp in 2007), and other Black titans. —J.V.