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Kehinde Wiley based this monumental painting of the British-born artist and writer Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born 1977) on a portrait of the young Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite, made by George Romney circa 1760. Wiley gives Yiadom-Boakye the trappings of an eighteenth-century British gentleman. The rifle and the dead game around her feet single her out as a person of property, for in that period only landowners were allowed to own firearms and shoot game, as shown in the two paintings her either side. This portrait subverts eighteenth-century values by transferring signifiers of nobility, status, and masculine authority to an influential black woman. This painting was first displayed in 2017 in Wiley’s exhibitions Trickster, which featured then additional portraits of contemporary black artists, all of which explore the intersection of art, culture, and black identity. The selected artists are, in Wiley’s view, archetypal “tricksters,” whose work challenges conventional cultural boundaries and, in so doing, lays bare society’s subtle forms of prejudice and constraint.
Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2021