Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence

Title: An Archeology of Silence
Artist: Kehinde Wiley
Curator: Christophe Leribault
Organized by: Musée d’Orsay
Venue: Fondazione Giorgio Cini

The exhibition Kehinde Wiley: “An Archaeology of Silence”, curated by Christophe Leribault, will be in collaboration with the Giorgio Cini Foundation as a collateral event of the 59th Venice Biennale. In this new body of work, Wiley highlights the brutality of the colonial, American and global past, using the figurative language of the fallen hero. The exhibition will include a series of previously unseen monumental paintings and sculptures, both familiar iconic elements in Wiley’s work.

We live in a digital age where we constantly come across images of young black men being killed, slaughtered, in streets all over the world. Technology allows us to witness these atrocities that were once unspoken.

As an American artist, the starting point for Wiley‘s artistic reflection was the merciless and unnecessary deaths in his home country, but it becomes an incisive metaphor for a global reality. The new portraits show young black men and women in vulnerable positions telling a story of survival and resilience, revealing the beauty that can emerge from tragedy. Their poses have been borrowed from Western European art historical sources that serve as extraordinary elegies, evoking the central metaphor of youth and resilience, and stand as monuments to perseverance in the face of savagery.