Kehinde Wiley’s latest piece of work, An Archaeology of Silence, is on display at the de Young Museum as part of the institution’s commitment to showcasing ground-breaking Black artists. With the use of the visual language of the fallen figure, Wiley‘s latest collection of work, which consists of paintings and sculptures, challenges the silence surrounding systemic brutality against Black people. “An archaeology of silence” is an extension of his 2008 work Down, which featured a number of large-scale portraits of young Black men drawn from The Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein the Younger (1521–1522).
Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977) is best known for his portraits of people of color rendered in the traditional Old Master settings. His work combines art history with contemporary culture, using the visual rhetoric of the heroic, the powerful, the magnificent, and the sublime to celebrate the people of colour he has met all around the world. Wiley’s portraits challenge and realign art-historical narratives, bringing to light challenging topics that many would prefer remain muted.
Image courtesy of de Young Museum
Wiley was the first African-American artist to paint an official United States Presidential portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. He was nominated by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2018. In 2019, Wiley established Black Rock Senegal, a multifaceted artist-in-residence program that invites artists from all over the world to live and work in Dakar, Senegal. Wiley has been awarded the Medal of Arts from the U.S. Department of State, the W.E.B. Du Bois Award from Harvard University, and the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters from France. He has had solo exhibitions in the United States and overseas, and his work is in the collections of over 50 public institutions worldwide.
In An Archaeology of Silence, Wiley analyzes the symbolism of death and sacrifice in Western art, tracing it through religious, mythical, and historical subjects. He examines the tragic murders of black men and women all throughout the world, transforming them into a powerful elegy of resistance. His paintings of figures struck down, wounded, or dead, reference iconic paintings of mythical heroes, martyrs, and saints. The paintings offer a haunting meditation on the legacies of colonialism and systemic racism.
The exhibition features some of the largest and smallest paintings and sculptures that Wiley has created. The series employs scale to elevate the people depicted to heroic status, which is generally lacking in depictions of the recumbent or fallen figure in Western art (including those on which Wiley’s works are based). The exhibition is part of the museums’ Department of Contemporary Art and Programming. The exhibition focuses on contemporary conversations and explorations of American identity, expanding on the narrative in the adjacent galleries dedicated to the Museum’s historic American Art collection.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will produce and publish a full-scale catalogue to accompany the exhibition. The catalogue, edited by Claudia Schmuckli, will include an interview with Kehinde Wiley, full-color reproductions of the show’s objects, and newly commissioned essays from community contributors.
Made possible by a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation, the exhibition, which opened on the 18th of March, will be on view till the 15th of October, 2023, in San Francisco.
