Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence features a new body
of paintings and sculptures by American artist Kehinde Wiley
confronting the legacies of colonialism through the visual language
of the fallen figure. It expands on a subject the artist first
explored in his 2008 series Down—a group of large-scale portraits
of young Black men inspired by Wiley’s encounter with Hans Holbein
the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22) at the
Kunstmuseum Basel. Holbein’s painting triggered an ongoing
investigation into the iconography of death and sacrifice in Western
art that Wiley traced across religious, mythological and historical
subjects. An Archaeology of Silence extends these considerations to
include men and women around the world whose senseless deaths, often
unacknowledged or silenced, are transformed into a powerful elegy of
global resistance against state-sanctioned violence. The resulting
paintings of Black bodies struck down, wounded or dead, all
referencing iconic historical paintings of slain heroes, martyrs or
saints, offer a haunting meditation on the violence against Black and
brown bodies through the lens of European art history.