The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are honored to host the US premiere of Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence, a monumental new body of work created against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the worldwide rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Expanding upon American artist Kehinde Wiley’s Down series from 2008, An Archaeology of Silence meditates on the deaths of young Black people slain all over the world. These 26 works stand as elegies and monuments, underscoring the fraught terms in which Black bodies are rendered visible, especially when at the hands of state-sanctioned violence.
The artist’s 2008 Down series featured a group of large-scale portraits of young Black men inspired by Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–1522). Holbein’s painting triggered an ongoing investigation into the iconography of death and sacrifice in Western art that Wiley traced across religious, mythological, and historical subjects. An Archaeology of Silence reconceptualizes this research into paintings and sculptures that confront the legacies of colonialism through the visual language of the fallen figure.
The resulting paintings of Black bodies struck down, wounded, resting, or dead, all referencing historical paintings of heroes, martyrs, or saints, offer a haunting meditation on the violence against Black and Brown bodies through European art historical references.
The exhibition is made possible by a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation. In addition to providing exhibition support, this generous gift will enable the presentation of a series of public programs and interpretation by community members who work in the areas of restorative justice and human rights, to inform the visitors’ experience in the exhibition.
In 2018 Wiley became the first African-American artist to paint an official U.S. Presidential portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Former U.S. President Barack Obama
selected Wiley for this honor.
Source: The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, November 3, 2022
https://www.famsf.org/