Lyle Ashton Harris (born February 6, 1965) is an American artist who has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation art and performance art. Harris uses his works to comment on societal constructs of sexuality and race, while exploring his own identity as a queer, black man. Early life Born in the Bronx, Harris was mostly raised by his chemistry professor mother Rudean after she divorced Harris's father, between New York City and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Harris has expressed the impact of the absence of his father as a large impact on his personal and emotional development, which would later be shown through some of his pieces, including his collaborations with his brother, Thomas Allen Harris. While in Dar Es Salaam, Harris and his brother were sent to an English-speaking Swahili school. Harris believed it was important to his development as both an artist and a black man to live in a country in which black people were in positions of power. He valued his time spent in Tanzania, as it was a sharp contrast to the school he attended in New York City. Harris spent a lot of his childhood with his grandparents, including his maternal grandmother Joella, who he has featured in his art, was a missionary and his grandfather was a treasurer for Greater Bethel AME Church (Harlem, New York), which influenced many of Harris' pieces. Additionally, his grandfather had an extensive photograph archive, which can be connected to Harris' later experimentation with photography in his art. During their youth in the early 1970s, Harris and his brother began to do drag on the weekends, in which they would perform in the hallway of their mother's home. This provided a safe space for the brothers to experiment with gender and their own personal sexual identity, something they feel is crucial to their artistic development. In addition to playing with gender and performance, Harris toyed with color and different functions of color. Growing up in the 1970s, there was a resurgence within the African American community in which exploration of African culture began to influence style and domestic culture. Harris used color to connect himself and his art back to these roots, as many in his community did at the time of his childhood. Academia and early works Education Harris originally decided to attend Wesleyan University with the intended major of Economics. During