Kehinde Wiley, Christian Martyr Tarcisius (El Hadjii Malick Gueye), Limited Edition skate deck, 2022

Kehinde Wiley

Christian Martyr Tarcisius (El Hadjii Malick Gueye), Limited Edition skate deck, 2022

Color silkscreen on limited edition maple wood Skateboard Skate Deck

Signed in plate, Signed on the deck; accompanied by printed card depicting the same image (shown) on artist's letterhead stating it is numbered 115/250

32 × 8 inches

This limited edition skateboard, Christian Martyr Tarcisius (El Hadjii Malick Gueye) is based upon a 2022 oil on canvas painting by Wiley, first exhibited in Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence at Foundazione Giorgio Cini as a collateral event of the 59th international art exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Expanding on Kehinde Wiley's body of work DOWN from 2008, which was initially inspired by Hans Holbein the Younger's The Dead Christ in the Tomb as well as historical paintings and sculptures of fallen warriors and figures in the state of repose, Wiley created an unsettling series of prone Black bodies, re-conceptualizing classical pictorial forms to create a contemporary version of monumental portraiture, resounding with violence, pain, and death, as well as ecstasy.
It was part of a series of painting made in response to the killings of Black men and women — “bodies chopped down,” the artist told a reporter for the New York Times.
Wiley made this painting in the months following the 2020 killing of George Floyd while in police custody. At the time, the artist was waiting out the pandemic at his studio in Dakar, Senegal, and said the pieces were meant to reflect not only American brutality but also the effects of colonialism on Africans. The name of the model, a Senegalese man, appears in parenthesis after the title of the painting.
“I wanted to create an American story that can be appreciated by all parts of the globe,” Wiley told the reporter. “In America, to be honest, there’s a different type of relevance.”
The modern styles of the models, he said, in settings reference iconic Western paintings of religious and mythological subjects, provide a sense of connection.
“The nuances of the hair-braiding style and nails and phone technology — it’s making it violently present right now. You start to piece together a story based on your own baggage,” the artist said about the work. “And certainly that’s the through line throughout all of it — these bodies chopped down.”
Wiley ascribes his sitter’s agency throughout his approach to image-making. His subjects are selected at random, through a process of ‘street casting’ that Wiley commenced in 2001 in Harlem, and has subsequently extended globally, from China and Haiti to Senegal and Jamaica. Those who accept Wiley’s invitation to the studio then choose poses from historical artworks and are photographed in their own clothes: ‘there are no props or dressing people up’, Wiley emphasizes. Therefore, Wiley champions ‘the beauty in that person who was just walking by you, who the world is ignoring’, exalting popular culture through paint, particularly the world of hip hop.
The skateboard is signed on the deck (printed); accompanied by printed card depicting the same image (shown) on artist's letterhead stating it is number 115/250.

Provenance
the artist