I understand blackness from the inside out. What my goal is, is to allow the world to see the humanity that I know personally to be the truth.
-Kehinde Wiley
For centuries, African Americans have been degraded within American mythology. Offensive racial content was created in order to further demean people of color. Anti-black caricatures like mammies and golliwogs have hindered the black community’s physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.
My work explores the complexities and the duality of being a person of color, while reflecting the humanity within blackness. My juxtaposition of figure and background depicts the fluidity of being black. No one group is monolithic. Being black deals with many different stigmas, standards, and stipulations.The pieces that are not in local color question the notion of what it means to be a “person of color.” When I walk in a room, my skin color is the first thing that people see. It often makes me feel alienated. This is why each figure is alone within the poured paint. Often times, my people are seen as threatening and viewed as inferior to other races. Despite the progress my race has endured with overcoming slavery, the civil rights movement, and so on, we still experience discrimination and racism.
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