Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photography and collage to installation and performance art. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender, and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Born in the Bronx, NY, raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and New York, Harris obtained a BA from Wesleyan University, a MFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts, and attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. His work is in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Tate Modern, London, UK, among others.

The “Constructs” series of black and white photographic prints was produced by Harris in 1989 during his first year in the MFA graduate program at the California Institute of Arts, Los Angeles. These photographs were initially presented publically in 1990 in an exhibition titled “AutoPortraits” organized by Autograph at Camerawork, London, UK, and in the 1992 exhibition “Fever” at Exit Art/The First World, New York, curated by co-founders Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman. This suite of four works was included in the groundbreaking exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art,” curated by Thelma Golden at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1994, which traveled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 1995. In 2019 the suite of four Constructs was acquired by the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, BC, Canada, and by the Tate Modern, London, UK.