Deana Lawson’s Nation presents a fraught domestic scene. At its center is a leatherette couch upon which two bare-chested young men, their necks slung with gold chains, gaze directly at the viewer. The man at the left points towards the viewer as if in recognition of an interloper. His mouth held uncomfortably agape with a gilded orthodontic device, the man to the right seems paradoxically at ease and grotesquely tormented. In the background, a third man stands as if looking at his phone, his head obscured by a postcard-sized photograph of a set of false teeth that is pushed into the top edge of the frame, above the glass. Visitors may recognize the image: it shows the dentures worn by George Washington, which were fabricated with teeth pulled from the mouths of enslaved people. In its densely layered signs and emblems, Lawson compels the viewer to search for the deeper truths underpinning Nation.
