The scuffling of students’ shoes leads me to a room full of dazzling art. Each white wall is adorned with grand portraits of figures captured in gouache and softly colored oil paints. Every muse carried a graceful expression and wore elegant clothing, but after a look at yet another painting with homogeneous themes of Eurocentric beauty and still-lifes of fruits on tableware likely worth more than my house, my eyes began to wander, growing weary.
“These paintings all looked the same,” was a fleeting thought in my head. This thought held no hostility — maybe a tinge of boredom — but was an observation that I just couldn’t ignore.
The atmosphere I was now in didn’t feel like one of smooth poise anymore, but of stiff haughtiness. The inquisitive glimmer in my eyes soon began to fade, and I found myself glancing at the time repeatedly. Each audible tick of the nearby analog clock was like a pouring pitcher to the glass of my impatience about to overflow.
Until I turned my head and gravitated towards a piece that immediately caught my attention, it brought back my curiosity.
“John, 1st Baron Byron, 2013 – Oil on canvas,” the blurb read, but I didn’t see that yet, I first saw the bold backgrounds framing a Black man wearing a simple shirt and jeans. I saw his pose of a strong, raised hand and an expression holding a solemn gaze towards the viewer. The lights and shadows on this man felt so clear, it was as if I were staring at a photograph. Juxtaposed with the two-dimensional flowers bending around the subject, I was amazed by the intricate energy that jumped off the page.
“Okay, let’s move to the next exhibit!” The voice of my group’s museum guide startled me from my fixation on the painting. I quickly snapped a photo of the piece, hoping to capture the memory and emotion of the sudden awe and wonder I felt before, during, and after learning about this piece.
Two years later, I feel the same way. I feel a surge of appreciation, understanding, and confidence in my skin knowing that someone who looked similar to me was placed in a room full of paintings of what some view as “classical, superior pieces of art,” which never seem to include muses that look like me. I feel proud to know that my color can, and is represented in rooms of art usually thought to be dominated by white muses.
Furthermore, I feel a flow of inspiration that stems from not only this work of art I remembered from the museum, but the work of many people of color who strived to earn a place in spaces that they already deserved and belonged in, but were denied access or opportunity. It is because of them that I aim to reflect on and express my own cultural identity whenever I pick up a paintbrush, so that whenever I create, every swash of color used and every textured brush stroke is made with intention, and my final product is something that another individual, who shares traits similar to mine, could also connect with, just like Kehinde Wiley connected with me.
The Absence of Empathetic Teens
