The Museum of Fine Arts Houston is currently hosting a riveting exhibition featuring the profound creations of renowned artist Kehinde Wiley, born out of the tumultuous summer of 2020. Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence has been called a monumental body of work created against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the global rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The exhibition had its U.S. premiere earlier this year at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and is on view at the MFAH from November 19, 2023, to May 27, 2024.
“Kehinde Wiley’s elegies, at once sublimely beautiful and deeply disturbing, are profoundly moving, even unforgettable. We are very proud to exhibit them at the Museum and participate in this national tour.”
Gary Tinterow
Wiley, who catapulted into the limelight after immortalizing President Barack Obama in an iconic portrait, has long been revered for his distinctive approach. He skillfully reimagines classical artistry by infusing modern Black models—often plucked from the streets—into his works, capturing them adorned in their everyday attire. His previous exhibits at prestigious institutions like the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and the MFAH have left indelible marks.
Drawing inspiration from his childhood encounters with 18th-century portraiture at the Huntington Art Museum, Wiley’s fascination with the opulence and exclusivity depicted in those classical portraits laid the foundation for his artistic rebellion. He sought to disrupt traditional perceptions of class and taste by channeling that power into individuals who resembled himself, subverting the historical norms of dominance and control.
Expanding upon his “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 people are rendered visible, especially when at the hands of systemic violence. Wiley has said, “That is the archaeology I am unearthing: The specter of police violence and state control over the bodies of young Black and Brown people all over the world.”
“Kehinde Wiley’s elegies, at once sublimely beautiful and deeply disturbing, are profoundly moving, even unforgettable. We are very proud to exhibit them at the Museum and participate in this national tour,” commented Gary Tinterow, Director, the Margaret Alkek Williams Chair, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
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 people struck down, wounded, resting, or dead, all referencing iconic historical paintings of heroes, martyrs, or saints, offer a haunting meditation on the violence against Black and Brown people through the imagery of European art-historical references.
Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence contains some of the largest paintings and sculptures Wiley has created to date, as well as some of the smallest. The series uses scale to elevate the people depicted to heroic status, generally absent from the depictions of the recumbent or fallen figure in Western art (including those that Wiley’s works have been based on). It marks an important departure in the artist’s work which, with the notable exception of “Down,” has been primarily concerned with verticality and elevation, projecting Black youth into positions of power and grace by painting them into compositions inspired by canonical Western portraits such as Anthony van Dyck’s Charles I at the Hunt (1636) or Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801), among many others.
Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wiley had to forgo his usual practice of “street casting”; he instead worked with residents, staff, and friends of Black Rock, a residency program he established in 2019 in Dakar, Senegal, where he spent most of his time during the international lockdown. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Wiley saw an opportunity to broaden the conversation beyond national concerns. The figures’ personal markers of Senegalese and West African culture, with regard to hair in particular, serve as a metaphor for the many places where you find systematically oppressed communities of Black and Brown people experiencing the same systemic violence, around the world.
