2016.27
Like It Is: Those Extraordinary Twins
Artist
Nyeema Morgan
(Philadelphia, PA, 1977 - )
Title
Like It Is: Those Extraordinary Twins
Creation Date
2016
Century
early 21st century
Dimensions
59 x 38 in. (149.86 x 96.52 cm)
Object Type
drawing
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
graphite pencil on Coventry paper
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, Barbara Cooney Porter Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2016.27
Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins were both published by Mark Twain in 1894. The conjoined twins in Those Extraordinary Twins ultimately inspired the dual protagonists in Pudd’nhead Wilson: a mixed-race African American child and a white child who are switched at birth and go on to play opposing social roles due to their perceived racial identities in the antebellum South. Though none of Twain’s characters are represented in this drawing, the text that shows faintly through the title page suggests a substructure that remains unseen, perhaps alluding to frameworks of thinking that govern perceptions of difference. Rendering a partial scan of the title page of a 2005 edition, Morgan omits the name of the author and the title of the better-known novel. Morgan’s suppression of a direct visual reference to the theme of racism central to Pudd’nhead Wilson is doubled by the withholding of her own racial identity from the work. Indeed, only her shadow remains.
Kinaya Hassane ’19
