“Mirror,” “Man with Hat,” and “Rose Tattoo,” from Arcade (Suite of Six)

Alison Saar, sculptor and printmaker, comes from a family of California-based artists. Her mother, Betye Saar (b. 1926), and sister, Lezley Saar (b. 1953), are both mixed-media artists, and her father, Richard Saar (1924–2004), was a ceramicist. Her work is inspired by fraught and powerful subjects: history, identity, motherhood, race, and racism. The three prints displayed here constitute half of her Arcade (Suite of Six), six individual studies of lone figures with mask-like faces. Somewhat unusually for Saar, this includes Black men as well as Black women—one of whom looks in a hand mirror and sees a white face reflected back.