Is anything the matter?  

Is anything the matter? Drawings by Laylah Ali includes more than a hundred drawings by Laylah Ali dating from 1993 to 2020. Though the drawings range in format — including ink, colored pencil, soluble crayon, colored marker, and mixed media works — each piece explores Ali’s ongoing interest in the amalgam of race, power, gendering, human frailty, and murky politics.

Spanning nearly three decades of Ali’s work, the exhibition spans the museums’ Main and West galleries, and allows visitors to discover stylistic and contextual similarities, contrasts, and shifts in her drawings over time.  

Laylah Ali was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1968, and she currently lives and works in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Ali has previously held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2003) and the Whitney Biennial (2004).  

The University Museum of Contemporary Art is the second venue for this traveling exhibition. It first opened in 2024 at the Cathy and Jessie Marion Art Gallery at the State University of New York in Fredonia. The third venue, Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, will show Is anything the matter? in the fall of 2025.  

Gallery talk with Professor of Contemporary and Modern Art Karen Kurcynski
February 19, 4-5 p.m.

UMass Professor of Contemporary and Modern Art Karen Kurczynski guided visitors through “Is anything the matter? Drawings by Laylah Ali” at the museum.

Kurczynski wrote an essay titled “Power in Play: The Drawings of Laylah Ali” for the exhibition catalog, which accompanies the exhibition as it travels to three venues over the course of two years. Ali’s drawings are also subject in Kurcynski's book project, “Drawing in Color: Power and Vulnerability in Art of the 1990s.”

“[The drawings] range from colorful imaginative portraits to comic-inspired scenarios that comment on everything from racial violence to gender politics in contemporary society,” writes Kurczynski.

She walked visitors through several of the exhibition’s distinct series, offering her insights and creating a dialogue with the group.
“Laylah talks about how drawing is a way of connecting to our private thoughts. It’s a way that we connect to each other emotionally on a deeper level than words,” Kurczynski said at the talk. “A lot of her work is about the way race and gender identity are not fixed categories. They’re operating together, intersectionality, all the time.”

“It refuses easy readings. It refuses assumptions. And it takes you out of your comfort zone. … That’s what all contemporary art does,” she said.
 

Laylah Ali Artist Talk
April 9, 6 p.m.

Ali invited community, vulnerability, and resistance as she shared works from the early 2000s to more recent pieces, all of which grapple with themes of race, power, gender, and human frailty, deeply rooted in the political climates of their time along with her own personal experiences.
 

The People’s Supper
April 8, 5-8 p.m.

Students from across campus gathered for a family-style meal and connected through art with a talk by artist Laylah Ali at the University Museum of Contemporary Art.

Here’s some of what we heard from students who participated: “It was such a wonderful opportunity to experience an artist and their art in this immersive way! I also enjoyed being in an environment with so many people from different backgrounds and experiences where we were able to come together to just appreciate this art!”

“I loved meeting new people who I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise!”

“I really enjoyed the refreshing take on viewing art by connecting people and interacting with them.”

In the press!

Hyperallergic: Artist Talks in Times of Facism 
“Laylah Ali, whose drawing survey is on view at UMass Amherst, has a knack for addressing what artists stay silent about,” writes Jesse Lambert, artist and 30-plus-year friend of Laylah Ali. 

INES Magazina: Laylah Ali and Eva Lin Fahey Solo Shows 
“The fact that Laylah Ali’s art is as mysterious as it is profound, the 100-plus drawings and mixed-media works in this exhibition have serious reverberations that extend well beyond their scale.” 
 
Williams College: Necessary Exploration 
“‘The show we need right now.’ That’s how Amanda Herman, associate director of the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst, describes an exhibition of more than 100 drawings by Williams art professor Laylah Ali ’91, on view through May 9.”