Joe Overstreet

Boxes

Joe Overstreet invested his practice in African-American history and his art was a direct response to America’s sustained legacy of racism. Overstreet’s works from the 1950s and 60s were two-dimensional and representational, depicting racial injustice and violence.

By the time that the artist created Boxes, his work was beginning to undergo an important evolution.

“I was beginning to look at my art in a different light, not as protest, but as a statement about people,” the artist said. “By 1970 I had broken free from notions that paintings had to be on the wall in rectangular shapes ... I began to make paintings that were tent-like. I was making nomadic art, and I could roll it up and travel ... We had survived with our art by rolling it up and moving it all over ... I felt like a nomad myself, with all the insensitivity in America.”