To accompany the exhibition, 'Christen Sveaas Art Foundation: The Unseen Selected' by Hurvin Anderson, 20 May – 7 August 2022, Hurvin Anderson has created two special silkscreen prints especially for Whitechapel Gallery.

Drawing on the American writer Ralph Ellison’s celebrated novel Invisible Man (1952) as a source of inspiration for both the show and the edition, the work references the narrator's almost hallucinatory fantasy involving Louis Armstrong’s performance of “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” on multiple gramophones simultaneously and the resulting permeation of the vibrations. With the song itself a well-known protest at racial injustice, Anderson’s subject matter for the work is situated within the artist’s ongoing exploration of experience and identity.

Anderson approached the print much like illustration, making numerous preparatory drawing to capture of the filmic qualities within Ellison’s text. The editions, depict the same image, printed in two black and blue colour variants. While the colours of the work were suggested by the song title, the variation occurred as a result of the creative print making process. Much like a painting, the making, remaking and variations that evolved opened up the potential for possibilities and offer a nod to the improvisation of jazz.