Glenn Ligon's *Slept Awoke* is a work on paper that employs oil stick and gesso to create the artist's signature use of text-based imagery, in which repeated or obscured language becomes visually dense and difficult to decipher. The layering of gesso over oil stick creates a tension between concealment and revelation, evoking themes of identity, consciousness, and the fluid boundary between states of being. The paradoxical title itself reflects Ligon's ongoing engagement with language as both a communicative tool and a site of contradiction and complexity.