Celebration and Mourning 

Art reminds us of life’s sacredness – translates it for us into many languages. In my five decades of creating and performing theater, making social issue documentary films, writing, and using other forms of artistic expression, I kept learning and experiencing first-hand the transformative power of art. (Art in contrast to purely commercial entertainment.). At its best – as happened to me two weeks ago – the magic of entering another world via art is a visceral and sensual experience that transforms us.  We enter with our body and senses alive, wide open. Art offers an alternative vision of how to gaze at the “other” and truly see by allowing it in. In a technology-obsessed world, we forget this is possible through very simple, even static, old-fashioned means. But it requires skill and vision of the artist. Commitment and responsibility are required, from artist and audience alike. When we look at or listen to art we are not just there to consume, we take in, participate, are transported and changed.  

 

On Thursday, at the De Young Museum in San Francisco for the exhibit An Archeology of Silence by Kehinde Wiley – stepping rooms with deep brown walls and ceilings which look at first black, we feel instantly engulfed in sacred darkness, like that of a cathedral, or cave. Disoriented and at the same time forced into focus. Times slows down. Out of the dark erupts an astonishing beauty. For the first unforgettable moments, I am breathless, transfixed. From the walls, huge paintings are bursting forth with such bright colors and astounding vigor. On black pedestals, sparsely lit dark-grey sculptures, seemingly floating in space, exude silent suffering. These contrasting “islands” are interacting in evocative and quiet ways. Sacred Blackness.

 

Reclining bodies of Black men and women are resting in lush greenery with bright flowers, at times curling around an arm, leg, hand or torso. Beneath the celebratory exuberance, sharp rocks, wood pieces or brown leaves hint at another reality. Paradoxes and ironies come to the forefront. Using the historical context of Western art, Kehinde Wiley subverts viewers’ assumptions on several levels. The referencing is subtle and intriguing, details are skillfully highlighted. Throughout, the exquisite sensuality is tinged with underlying grief, violation, loss, as well as contemplation, ecstatic prayer…   

 

Choosing to forgo the audio tour and other explanations, I feel directly welcome and embraced. Undistracted, all penetrates and activates my senses. The use of space, paintings and sculptures, dark and light – all is theatrical, bold, enlivening. And questioning. I am including here a few snap shots, but be sure to click on the links to get a better taste! 

 

Quietly reposing, these figures – or characters one could say – are so realistic, one is wondering are they perhaps dead? Or just sleeping? Posing? Slightly twisted. The tension is uncomfortable. Have we not all seen blurred images of murdered Black people in similar poses thrown to the ground by gun violence or physical brutality? Violence by police, especially, documented well in recent years by courageous bystanders. 

The exhibit is full of juxtapositions, opposing forces and meanings, and yet it exudes harmony, light and beauty. Oneness. It celebrates life, especially Black life and lives, with all its contradictions. I am aware how drastically different Black and white people will experience walking through these rooms. But all will admire the exuberant skill of Kehinde Wiley, his unique sure hand, brush & voice, how he organizes space, his command of light, and history. 

This is the last week of the exhibit. I invite Nicky to join me. Nicky has the eye of a trained artist (which she is). We stand close, whisper to each other, comparing notes and impressions, as we weave through the connected rooms, each like its own chapel. Penetrating deeper, the free-floating increasingly monumental paintings, and the subtle language of the sculptures of bodies resting at eye-level – all seep through skin into my heart. Body, mind, soul and spirit are stimulated. Nicky and I are observing through the lens of our individual circumstances: living in American society on “stolen” Indigenous land, bringing with us our own histories – she a Californian born young Filipina, artist and activist, me German born, an older “resident alien” in America for four decades. Present is awareness of racial injustice, lost and stolen lives, falsely repeated myths and racist stereotypes about African Americans in this country. The history of Slavery. In this world of Kehinde Wiley, a silver necklace dangling from the neck touching the ground, or a bracelet around the wrist, might be chains. Slowly meandering back to the beginning, eyes by now used to the dark, we see and sense more evolving references, connections between the pieces... echoes…

Exiting back to the world, transformed, not able to take anything else in – I sit in the museum’s garden. Waiting for Nicky who checks out another exhibit, I quietly breathe deep mourning, bright joy, exuberance, and hope. My soul is fed.

 

Video about Wiley’s approach for this exhibit 

“It’s the desire to be seen, to be alive, that the work is about” he says. 

https://www.famsf.org/stories/kehinde-wiley-reshaping-the-monumental 

Just days before it closed on October 15, I had alerted my friend Summer to this exceptional exhibit at the De Young Museum. Here are her eloquent observations: 

Astonishing on all levels as you enumerate. I got into a casual conversation with another viewer about a particular painting's title, and then he commented on the pristine shoes and hip-hop style, the cleanliness, etc. and spontaneously, I said, "They're all angels." I was surprised as was he as we both acknowledged that was so. Or at least, one interpretation. I so appreciate how he uses dazzling technical skills to eviscerate and illuminate with constant irony, constant reverence. A brilliant experience! 

 

Listen to the enlightening audio tour:  https://soundcloud.com/fine-arts-museums-sf/sets/kehinde-wiley-an-archaeology-of-silence-audio-tour 

 

New York Times Review