Kehinde Wiley Responds To“Aesthetically Terrifying” Label With $120 T-Shirt

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Artist Kehinde Wiley has launched a $120 black T-shirt featuring the phrase“aesthetically terrifying,” directly referencing a recent comment made by Erin Scavino, director of Art in Embassies. Scavino used the description last week during a podcast interview with Sean Spicer, referring to Wiley's 2013 painting, Young Artists After Siamesas 1960, which is currently displayed at the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic.

The controversy surrounding the artwork intensified following an unearthed radio interview from April. In this interview, conducted in Spanish, US Ambassador Leah Campos described the painting as a“huge painting of a picnic in a park with flowers and some lesbians,” according to The New York Times. Campos incorrectly asserted in the interview that the Biden administration intended to bring“that ideology here to the Dominican people.” The State Department commissioned Wiley's painting in 2013 during the Obama administration.

Wiley has not publicly addressed the controversy directly, but his Instagram post on his official e-commerce account, featuring the new T-shirt, included a statement:“A response. A reclamation. A reminder that art has never needed permission to be beautiful, provocative, or powerful.”

The Trump administration has been systematically changing artwork in its embassies, aiming to reflect“American patriotism and the beauty of our great country.” Campos highlighted this shift in an August Instagram post, noting the replacement of Wiley's painting with an image of the American flag, set to the Twisted Sister song“We're Not Gonna Take It.”

This initiative extends to other cultural institutions. At the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., workers have begun disassembling Joel Shapiro's monumental 24-foot-tall sculpture, Blue. Shapiro, an American sculptor, donated the work to the center in 2019. The New York Times reported that Shapiro's sculpture was“targeted for elimination after President Trump's takeover of the center.” In December, the center's board, led by Trump and comprised of his allies, voted to inscribe his name on the building's facade, leading to an ongoing legal dispute within the federal court system.

We previously reported:

The US State Department is exploring the sale of Kehinde Wiley's 2013 painting, Young Artists After Siamesas 1960, citing a shift from“woke ideologies.”

Source: ARTnews

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