Kehinde Wiley’s Santos Dumont—The Father of Aviation II is unmissable in Mia’s new contemporary art gallery. It’s Mia’s slice of Wiley’s yearslong The World Stage series. “We knew we wanted this to be a focal point,” says Casey Riley, Mia’s chair of global contemporary art.
The work came about during the artist’s early-2000s trip to Rio de Janeiro. There, Wiley asked two young Black men to pose at a monument dedicated to Alberto Santos-Dumont, one of the world’s first aviators, who became increasingly distraught by the use of planes as weapons of war and eventually died by suicide in 1932. The monument shows Santos-Dumont as a sort of Icarus figure surrounded by dead men—and it’s those figures at its base that inspired the poses of the two men.
“They’re very much alive and lively, but they’re not at ease, either,” says Riley. She notes the painting is a commentary on Black people’s contributions to creating wealth and culture around the world—and the significant price they paid. “There’s that tension between the history of extraction, exploitation, and enslavement,” she says. “And there’s this beautiful reclamation that’s created through the eyes of the artist.”
2400 3rd Ave. S., Mpls.
2018
The year Wiley created Barack Obama’s floral-and-foliage-backed painting for the National Portrait Gallery, for which the artist may be best known. That painting is also huge: Counting the frame, it stretches 92.25 by 65.81 inches.
89.5 x 168
The dimensions of the painting in inches (including its frame).
8
The number of collections in Kehinde Wiley’s The World Stage series, which took him around the globe, from Israel and Jamaica to China, France, and beyond.
2009
Year Santos Dumont was painted (also the year anonymous donors gifted the funds for Mia to purchase the painting).
3
Number of galleries in Mia’s new contemporary art installation—named Artists Reflect, Advocacy through Art, and Shared Humanity—which flow together to highlight BIPOC, LGBTQ, and women artists and allow visitors to think critically about social change, colonialism, violence, and history through sculptures, photos, paintings, textile arts, and more.
310
The gallery the painting resides in at Mia.
December 14, 2022
6:37 AM