Tim Rollins and K.O.S. first participated in FWM’s residency program in 1989, making two projects—a t-shirt, entitled By Any Means Necessary and based on the autobiography of Malcolm X, and Scarlet Letter shirt, a white dress shirt emblazoned with an embroidered “A” and based on the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel.
In 1997, the group returned to FWM, undertaking a limited edition multiple, titled Invisible Man (after Ralph Ellison) and based on the novel of the same title. In an exhibition that same year at FWM, they also presented a new painting from a series based on Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This young woman’s account of being born and raised as a slave in the South before the Civil War includes her eventual escape from an abusive master and describes seven years of hiding in a small garret in her grandmother’s house. The painting by Tim Rollins and K.O.S. combines actual pages from the book, which cover the surface of a canvas, and a delicate overlay of vertical bands of brightly-colored satin ribbons. The colors of the ribbons were selected by K.O.S. to express “the colors of joy,” a reference to a passage from Jacobs’ book when the narrator glimpses the brilliant, festive colored ribbons worn by local Christmas revelers from the window in her grandmother’s attic.
During their second residency in 1997 and later in 1999, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. led educational workshops for middle and high school students using Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as inspiration for the group’s discussion and collaborative art project; the later workshop was held at FWM and sponsored by the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership.
