(Still) A Time of War
Here in Richmond, VA, we have a problem. Actually, we have many problems, but this one in particular is rearing its head this week and it has very old origins. The Virginia Museum of Fine Art has purchased “Rumors of War”, a sculpture by Kehinde Wiley, one of our country’s most important contemporary artists. Many Richmonders, especially those involved in the arts community, are ecstatic. We watched the live stream of the statue being unveiled in Time Square last week and cheered along with the crowds. This important work will live in our city, beginning in December. I can hardly wait. This week I shared the momentous occasion with my high school art students, and they were transfixed. In his speech in Times Square, Wiley explained that he had been to Richmond several years ago to attend the opening of his retrospective show at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and he had driven down Monument Avenue to see the statues of a number of Confederate generals and leaders that are placed down the center of the wide boulevard. He was affected tremendously by the experience and decided to make his own monument in response:
“Honestly, this makes me think more about where this story starts,” Wiley said in his address to the New York City crowd on Friday. “The story starts with going to Virginia, of course, and seeing the monuments that line the streets. But it’s also about being in this black body. I’m a black man walking those streets, I’m looking up at those things that give me a sense of dread and fear. What does that feel like physically, to walk a public space and to have your state, your country, your nation say ‘this is what we stand by?’
Wiley’s past work has appropriated many paintings from art history and replaced white symbols of power (such as Napoleon, and King Charles I) with portraits of young Black men and women, people who have had held no power in the contemporary world as well as through out history. His idea to appropriate a Richmond monument to J.E.B. Stuart, a Confederate general, aligns with his body of work. Wiley disrupts the worship of White Supremacy and imagines a new kind of statue, one in which cultural peace is celebrated rather than violence.
My students are looking forward to the field trip we will take this winter to witness the artwork after it is installed and they walked out of class after our discussion smiling at the very idea of a Kehinde Wiley monument in RVA. They are the Black and Brown bodies that Wiley made this monument for. They are living the effects of oppression and of the racism in our city and to them, this monument will tell the world about their experiences.
Not everyone is smiling, however. The problem of the reverence for Confederate heritage has lasted the test of time and survived extreme change in Richmond. Despite demographic shifts in the region, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the horrific and violent demonstrations in Charlottesville, VA, many Richmonders still believe that celebrating Confederate history is essential. In fact every day a few White Richmonders stand outside of the VMFA and wave Confederate flags to make sure the public knows that they believe in the ideals of the Confederacy. These defenders of “The Lost Cause,” are enraged by the future installation of the “Rumors of War” monument. A group known as “The Monument Avenue Preservation Society” are mad as hell. They have written about the Wiley monument: “its symbolism perpetuates the “us vs them” narrative of race relations in America through its depiction of one cultural group subverting and claiming dominance over the other — a dynamic that has been a tragic truth of our past and our present, but should not be a part of our future.” Although Wiley created a monument to publicly acknowledge the experience of Black people in Richmond, this response from MAPS fails to recognize that the real symbols of the “us vs them” narrative in Richmond come from the Confederate monuments themselves. The monuments, despite what many people think, were not erected right after the Civil war to memorialize the dead, but were created during the Jim Crow era to remind Richmond’s Black citizens that White Supremacy reigned supreme and controlled their lives. The monuments are symbols of the direct violence, segregation, housing discrimination, prejudice, and absence of opportunity that Black and Brown bodies have suffered in and around our city for a very long time.
Johann Galtung, a sociologist and founder of Peace and Conflict Studies, would call the Monument Avenue Preservation Society a catalyst for cultural violence. According to Galtung (1990), cultural violence is “any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. Symbolic violence built into a culture does not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. However, it is used to legitimize either or both.” I learned about Galtung this past summer as a part of the Religious Literacy Project at the School of Divinity at Harvard University. After returning from this unforgettable professional development experience, I have come to rely on his ideas to teach my students about the ramifications of the current political and societal events happening every day in their world. Cultural violence is alive and well in our city.
As a teacher of art Art and Art History at a Title One High School, I witness the effects of Galtung’s cultural violence each and every day. I see the results of substandard facilities and a lack of resources. I see teenagers who rely on violence to resolve conflict, and use a language of self-doubt that prevents them from taking academic risks. I see chronic absenteeism, mice scurrying around my classroom, and children who struggle to see themselves represented in the curriculum that is mandated by the state of Virginia. Structural violence created this environment. The monuments in our city are the symbols that stand for the racism that has endured for centuries right here in the midst of our day to day lives.
I tell my Art History students that artists have the role in societies of making history into myth. Artists don’t record statistics or dates, but they show us the effects of history on the people who lived it. Art humanizes the experiences of people that in other disciplines, are simply cold facts. Artists are our story keepers. Kehinde Wiley’s sculpture “Rumors of War,” is a story about our county, our state, our city, and the people who live here. His expressions of anger and pain, resilience, and pride, are needed in our city. He speaks for generations of our neighbors and ancestors. If you don’t want the sculpture in Richmond, I want to know why.
Are you ashamed for our city because our crimes are so public now? Are you still defending White Supremacy because you are threatened by equity? Are you comfortable with city residents walking by our monuments and feeling dread and fear? Or can you not feel empathy? I really want to know. What are you really defending when you deny the peace and safety of your fellow human beings? Do you care about stone more than you care about people? We are living in a culture of extreme division and yes, sometimes a mentality of us vs. them becomes our most comfortable spot. So explain. Help me understand. What drives you to keep defending the rights of statues while denying the rights of Richmonders? Kehinde Wiley has made these questions public for all of us to answer. My students are waiting for your response.
