A Letter from a Birmingham City Jail (after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Executed in 2008,  A Letter from a Birmingham City Jail (after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) witnesses Tim Rollins’ continued engagement with the community of the Bronx, New York, where in 1984 he launched the Art and Knowledge Workshop with a group of at-risk students who called themselves K.O.S. (Kids of Survival). With its rhythmic succession of black and white streaks, the work initially seems to pay homage to the formal qualities of Minimalism, recalling Daniel Buren’s striped paintings in particular. However, a closer look reveals an underlying typed text: book pages painted over with slightly irregular lines of white and black paint. The words are those of Martin Luther King Jr., taken from his Letter from a Birmingham City Jail, composed from prison in 1963 during the throes of the American civil rights movement. As the work’s mesmerising optical vibration render the text almost illegible, the black stripes become symbolic prison-cell bars through which King’s defense of nonviolent resistance strains to be heard. Engaging one of the twentieth century’s most powerful texts, the work exemplifies the unique collaboration between Rollins and his students: a piece of American history translated in a compelling visual language.