Toned gelatin silver print, with Prestype and frame, 1989. 779x781 mm; 30 5/8x30 3/4 inches, including the frame. Edition of 3. From the Colored People series.
Provenance: collection of the artist, New York; P.P.O.W., New York; private collection, New York.
High Yella Girl is a significant and very scarce work from the artist's important 1988-89 series. Weems focuses on the cultural emphasis that has been placed on African-Americans' skin color and the divisions it causes. This idea is further exaggerated with Weems' use of a bright yellow tone - it highlights how our perceptions of color and race are conditioned by artificial standards. The artist printed another edition of 5 in 1997 - a later print is in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, and was included in the 2016 exhibition The End of Innocence: Childhood Torments in the Contemporary Art Collection.
