Untitled #31

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While Untitled #31 may seem like a purely abstract composition, it includes two figures: the two small white elements near its upper corners, which mirror each other. Many of Malcolm Bailey’s paintings include silhouettes of slave ships and the people they held, and they often feature human shapes like these. These figures appear in profile, often contorted, seating, or lying down and holding their knees, reflecting the cramped positions enslaved people were forced to endure. Working in the late 1960s and 1970s at the end of the civil rights movement, the artist would pose in front of his artwork in the same position as the figures in Untitled #31, to link then-current events with the legacy of slavery.