There's something really cool about taking oily coloured paste and pushing it around with these hairy sticks and making something that looks like you. That's the magic of painting.
Kehinde WileyRead
The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There's a dissonance between inside and outside.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the gap between the public perception of Black American identity and the personal experience of being Black.
Kehinde Wiley's quote expresses the complex relationship between societal expectations and personal identity within the Black American experience. It emphasizes the dissonance, or disconnect, that can exist between how people perceive the identity of Black Americans and the reality of living as a Black individual, suggesting that external performance does not always align with internal truths. This observation invites deeper reflection on identity, representation, and the lived experiences of marginalized communities.
Themes
IdentityExperienceBlackDissonancePerception
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on racial identity at a community forum.
More from Kehinde Wiley
All quotes βThis idea that my work is about hip-hop is a little reductive. What I'm interested in is the performance of masculinity, the performance of ethnicity, and how they intermingle across cultures.
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What is portraiture? It's choice. It's the ability to position your body in the world for the world to celebrate you on your own terms.
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The ability to be the first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president of the United States is absolutely overwhelming. It doesn't get any better than that.
Kehinde WileyRead
Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them.
Kehinde WileyRead
What I try to do is defy expectations in terms of boundaries, whether it is high or low art, pop culture, or fine-art culture. My work is about reconciling myriad cultural influences and bringing them into one picture.
Kehinde WileyRead
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