On View
On viewObject number2020.41
Hot Girl Summer
Artist
Flo Ngala
(American, 1995)
Date2020
Mediumcolor digital print
Dimensionsmat: 24 × 30 in. (61 × 76.2 cm)
sheet: 16 × 24 in. (40.6 × 61 cm)
sheet: 16 × 24 in. (40.6 × 61 cm)
Credit LineElisabeth Claire Lahti Fund
Exhibition History"Resilience: African American Artists as Agents of Change," [Travel Version] at the Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, MI (June 6, 2021 - August, 15, 2021)Label TextHarlem-based photographer and photojournalist Flo Ngala’s Hot Girl Summer captures a moment of celebration and contradiction. The phrase “hot girl summer,” popularized in 2019, speaks to confidence, joy, and the affirmation of one’s individuality. Created in 2020, the photograph emerges from a year shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide protests against police violence following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and others.
Rather than documenting a mass demonstration, Ngala frames a solitary woman in New York City’s Times Square, raising her fist before a large-scale digital display of the American flag. The darkened yet illuminated setting amplifies the figure’s gesture, positioning individual presence in conversation with national symbolism. Hot Girl Summer holds the tension between visibility and isolation, public solidarity and personal agency, suggesting how acts of self-love and determination can persist despite collective crisis.
[Label Text: For the People: America at 250 Exhibition, June 27 - October 4, 2026]
