Play | Topics | Authors | Random

Danh ngôn của Kehinde Wiley (Sứ mệnh: 4)

You have to be careful about over-politicizing the utterances of people of colour because, oftentimes, there's poetry that seeks to go beyond that narrative.
If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being celebrated on the big walls of museums throughout the world. What feels really strange is not to be able to see a reflection of myself in that world.
I started making work that I assumed would be far too garish, far too decadent, far too black for the world to care about. I, to this day, am thankful to whatever force there is out there that allows me to get away with painting the stories of people like me.
During 1989, my mother, who was exceedingly good at finding these free programs - you know, we were on welfare, just trying to get through - but she would find these amazing programs. She sent me to the Soviet Union at the age of 12 to go study in the forest of then-Leningrad with 50 other Soviet kids.
It was an amazing childhood, despite what you might think about black struggle and poor neighbourhoods and the ghetto. My mother was an educated, budding linguist who really inspired us. Some of the leading indicators of success in the world have to do with how many books are in the house when you're a kid.
Artists should be able to thrive and allow their ideas to flourish as much as those in biotechnology or finance.
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.
When you go back to the days when I was studying how to paint, some of the things that excited me most was to go into the Huntington Library and Gardens and to see the amazing pictures of the landed gentry.
The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.
There is something that always will be true about painting and sculpture - that in order to really get it, you have to show up. That is something that is both sad and kind of beautiful about it. It remains analog. It remains special and irreducible.
Art is about changing what we see in our everyday lives and representing it in such a way that it gives us hope.
In the end, what I'm trying to say as a person who does all this travel and fashions these images is that you arrive at an approximate location but never one destination.