Kehinde Wiley’s searing new San Francisco show captures brutality, humanity, grief and grace

On 18 March, acclaimed American painter Kehinde Wiley will unveil a new exhibition ‘An Archaeology of Silence’ at the de Young Museum, part of The Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. 

Wiley created this monumental body of work as the global Covid-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement gripped the world. ‘An Archaeology of Silence’ conveys the brutality, humanity, injustice, grief and grace that the Black community has endured and exemplified. Made up of 26 works that vary in scale, all aspects of the exhibition stand as elegies and monuments to those lost and those who have lost. 

‘An Archaeology of Silence’ expands on an earlier series, Down, that Wiley made in 2008 – a group of large-scale portraits of young Black men, inspired by Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521-1522), which prompted Wiley’s still ongoing investigations into the iconography of death and sacrifice in Western art across mythological, religious and historical subjects. The new works reframe the artist’s observations to also confront the legacies of colonialism through the visual trope of the fallen figure. The resulting works are of Black people struck down, wounded, in repose or dead, each referencing a historical painting of saints, martyrs and heroes to underscore the cycle of violence against Black and Brown people.

‘It’s strange how ideas are not just play things, but have consequence in the world,’ says Wiley, during a preview of the works ahead of the opening. ‘To go from just being here messing around with oil paint to being able to engage powers and principalities and tendencies that exist out there in the real world. This seemingly casual act of making paintings can actually really be quite consequential.’

He says, ‘When I first started painting, I was basically naval-gazing and trying to make stuff that satisfied conceptual arguments that existed at Yale or that I read in books. Then I came out at the Studio Museum in Harlem and started to move in a different direction. Slowly, I started fashioning this language about power, authority and dignity that is a lot more about looking out and it became more about how we sit in the world.’

The works in ‘An Archaeology of Silence’ are some of the largest and smallest that Wiley has ever created. Using scale to elevate their subjects to hero status, the works range from figurative bronze sculptures that hauntingly depict grief, pain and mourning to vibrantly, flower-filled portraits featuring residents, staff and friends of Black Rock, the residency which the artist founded in 2019 in Senegal and where he spent most of lockdown. Filled with personal markers of Senegalese and West African culture, especially in the depiction of hair, these portraits comment on the deep roots of systemic oppression and violence that Black and Brown people endure all around the world. 

A significant aspect of the show is the museum’s demonstration of reverence and sensitivity towards the subject matter. Thanks to a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation, public programming and interventions from community partners who work in the areas of restorative justice and human rights have been incorporated to inform visitors’ experience. The museum’s Textile Arts gallery, just adjacent to the exhibition space, has also been designated as a respite room, where visitors can collect themselves and their thoughts before or after viewing the works.  

An additional $1 million grant from Google.org also makes the exhibition more accessible to the Bay Area community, by enabling the museum to offer eight weekends of free admission. This grant also supports a free audio guide, public programming such as a talk with the artist, grief workshops, school and youth curriculum, an exhibition film, and an ongoing community engagement speaker series presented in partnership with LiveFree – an SF organisation working to end the gun violence, mass incarceration, and the criminalisation of Black and Brown people. 

Kehinde Wiley: 'An Archaeology of Silence' runs from 18 March – 15 October 2023 at the de Young Museum, San Francisco. famsf.org