Before Darrel Ellis died, at age 33 of AIDS-related causes in 1992, the Bronx-born, mixed-media artist was exploring themes uncannily relevant in the COVID era, from the fragility of life and relationships to Black identity and civil rights. So it’s fitting that a new exhibition of his work — opening Thursday at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts — takes its title from his pen-and-ink drawing “Please Stay Home.”
As a plea during a pandemic or a request from a lover, the phrase is ambiguous yet fraught with meaning, curator Makeda Best said. “We don’t know the context of the subject of the drawing” from the early 1980s, which depicts two people standing in a bedroom, “or why he wrote that on the work.” However, it “brings out important trends that were really accentuated by the pandemic.”
Family history is key. Much of Ellis’s prints, paintings, and photos are reinterpretations of images created by his father — a professional photographer who was killed by police two months before Ellis was born.
