Lost Boys

Alison Saar, known primarily as a sculptor, often uses printmaking and drawing to further explore themes found in her three-dimensional work. Such is the case with her print, "Lost Boys," which is related to an installation from 2001 of 13 bronze-cast shoe soles suspended from strips of red fabric nailed into a wall. The title references the Lost Boys of Sudan—the more than 27,000 children displaced or orphaned during the second Sudanese civil war (1983–2005). Ranging in age from 7 to 17, the boys were forced to flee from Sudan to international relief camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, often without shoes. For this etching, Saar ran shoe soles through the printing press, allowing ink to pool at the edges of the imprint. The faces appear to hover, ghostlike, over the soles, encouraging us to consider the suspended state of over 65 million displaced refugees in the world today.