Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing features a collection of Trenton Doyle Hancock’s drawings from the past two decades. This collection includes illustrations from books, comic strips, and collages. Majority of these pieces are achromatic ink illustrations with a minimal splash of color. This exhibition can be seen at the Studio Museum Harlem from March 26 to June 28, 2015.

A general glance around the studio space of this exhibition will bring the viewer into Hancock’s imaginary, fantastical nature. The characters that are commonly featured in most of his pieces are the “Mounds” and the “vegans.” The Mounds, according to Hancock, are half-human and half-plant creatures that are preyed upon by the “evil beings” called the “vegans.” These creatures are described with the usual definition of a vegan: a human who avoids milk, meat, leather and animal by-products. The story between the Mounds and the vegans are common all throughout the exhibition.

The story of the relationship between these two groups is featured in Hancock’s book, Me a Mound. It is a hard cover book decorated with black and white stripes and the words “Me a Mound” (2006) are cut out from flesh-colored pink paper and pasted on the book. One of the pages in the book consist of a drawing titled “The Tofu Converters,” and this illustration shows two “vegans” in the process of making tofu blocks. One skinny vegan is drawn putting moist meat from a bucket–a bucket labeled “MM,” which stands for “Mound Meat”–into a long system of pipes that shape itself to become “The Tofu Converters.” At the end of the pipe, a crouching, snickering vegan observes the piles of tofu blocks created with the meat. This piece was drawn with ink on paper.

Based on the appearences of the two “vegans” in this piece, it seems as though the artist is purposely trying to portray “vegans” as creatures that live an anorexic life and limit their consumption solely to tofu blocks. In addition, Hancock’s creates an ironic statement about these “vegans,” by portraying them as creatures that refuse to eat animal by-products, but ironically consume the meat of their enemies in the shape of tofu blocks.

I believe that Hancock possesses a great set of art skills, as evident in the very intricate details in most of his pieces–such as Miracle Machine #9 and The Furnace that Burned Together Goodness (2005). In this mixed media piece, he drew minuscule details in the foreground that blend together to make a shade of grey when seen from a distance. His talent enables him to produce great works of art, but the constant usage of the “vegans” can make the pieces somewhat provocative. Viewers may be able to stay tolerant with such themes if featured infrequently, but its sheer persistence may unintentionally hint towards hatred for the vegetarian community. The artist may not have intended to offend anyone in any way, but the constant repetition of this theme may offend those who find this topic sensitive.