Just One Look: Pairing/Passing Two Decks/Two Games

Just One Look: Pairing/Passing
Lyall F. Harris
Charlottesville, Virginia: Lyall F. Harris, 2016
Sam Fleming Southern Civilization Collection
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

Lyall Harris is a visual artist, writer, and educator based in Virginia, who specializes in book art. Her piece Just One Look: Pairing/Passing was commissioned for the 2016 exhibition Just One Look, hosted by the University of Washington Libraries Special Collection in Seattle, Washington. For its original exhibition, Harris’s work was created in response to the book You Are Free by Danzy Senna, a collection of short stories that challenge readers to evaluate their assumptions regarding race, gender, and class.

In Just One Look: Pairing/Passing,  Harris utilizes themes of first impressions, assumptions, and (mis)perceptions. The artwork consists of two decks of cards—31 double-sided, digitally printed cards to a deck. The Passing deck of cards features various skin tones on one side and numerical values on the reverse. Instructions ask participants and viewers to “decide on a ‘passing stack or stacks. What is ‘passing?’ Passing for Black? White? Latino? Asian? Middle Eastern? African? etc.” This discomforting game is intended to cause players to question their assumptions of racial identity based on visual identifiers and first impressions.