Since the late 1960s, Hammons has been instrumental in the ongoing investigation of African-American popular culture, which has become the primary source for his work. He uses refuse found in his environment, such as chicken bones, brown paper bags, hair, bottle caps, and liquor bottles. Vacillating between two cultures, Hammons' work resonates with the human need for subsistence. An important addition to the Walker’s collection of postwar assemblage art, Flight Fantasy explores the connection between flying, birds, and a celestial figure. Using found objects such as feathers, bamboo, and shards of 45 rpm records, the artist conveys a sense of flight and illusion. The work is also evocative in its incorporation of African-American hair as a critique of the dislocation of the black body in American society.

In the same way that I chose Paul Thek, because I think he has, first, a strong aesthetical statement in the work and strong political statement in the work and historical something, which is beyond the work, I think this is also what gives David Hammons all the complexity of his work. First, if you speak just about the aesthetic point of view, he is totally addressing practices with good, fine roots in Arte Povera, in the way of art with artists dealing with trash, found objects, and aestheticizing them. … So, this work, Flight Fantasy, is done with a piece of a vinyl record, his own hair, I think arrows. It’s … is very, very elegant. But, in the same way, all the complexity of David Hammons' work is that he’s pushing the aesthetic of this object very far. It’s always very elegant; but in the same way when you look at the details of the piece, it’s music. It’s hair. It’s the hair of an African-American artist. Then, he’s pushing an agenda which would be the stereotype of African-American people or how African-American artists are perceived. He’s distorting all of these stereotypes to produce something which is a critique of the way this community has been seen. David Hammons is now, I think, fifty-five years old. He’s been working since the 1970s, always on the periphery. Now, he’s becoming one of the most famous artists in the American art scene, but still willing to remain on the periphery.

David Hammons has been a central figure in American art since the late 1960s as a conceptual artist, environmental sculptor, and social commentator, creating works that exhume and investigate discarded artifacts from African-American vernacular culture. We had been looking for a piece by Hammons to add to the collection since I began working at the Walker in 1991, but had not been able to find the right one.