In St. Barth's one Christmas, Richard Prince picked up Yes Rasta, a coffee table book of black and white photographs of Rastafarians, and saw himself. "I love the look, I love the dreads... I said to myself, gee, I wish I could look like that someday...If I can’t look like that, maybe I should paint them." He began drawing on top of the photos. Then he blew up the images and reworked them into paintings. He called the series the Canal Zone, because the Rastas' tropical home reminded him of his childhood in Panama.
These autobiographical threads, and Prince's self-identification with the Rastas, were largely overlooked in the lawsuit photographer Patrick Cariou brought against Prince for using his images. They didn't seem especially important to Prince's courtroom victory, either. But these densely woven threads of Prince's self and story extend through many of his bodies of work, from his earliest photo appropriations to his paintings. Whatever else he is doing with his artwork, Prince is often also revealing something about himself.
This project at Sugar Mill MOCA conjures a portrait of the artist by repeating his appropriations, retracing his desire to identify with Rastafarian ways of life, and resituating these images in a place of their imagined origins. - Greg Allen