He then went on to create a minuscule list of 26 authors which he considered to make up the entire canon, only 6 of which were women and even fewer were authors of colour. All works were either written in English, or had been translated into English.

With my work, I’ve created silhouettes of bookshelves by painting the negative space between the books, rather than the books themselves. This is a way of visually indicating that I’m speaking to the books that go unread, the authors who had slipped through the cracks when that initial list was created. I’ve then paired this triptych with sculptural stacks of books which I made out of foam board; the names of the authors who I was focusing on in particular are listed on the spines.

I chose to highlight three authors from different countries and time periods; beginning with Aphra Behn of the restoration era from Britain, she was credited with writing the first English novel. Moving onto Tahereh, who was alive during the 1800’s and was an influential poet from Iran before she was martyred, and Ann Petry who’s debut novel from 1946, The Street, became the first novel by an African-American woman to sell more than a million copies. By focusing on such writers, I’m pointing out the biased and one-sided nature of “The Western Canon” which failed what it set out to do — exalt great literature.