Kehinde Wiley presents 'Rumors of War'

On Friday 27 September, Kehinde Wiley unveiled a monumental public sculpture in Times Square, New York on the Broadway Plaza between 46th and 47th Streets. Following its presentation in Times Square, 'Rumors of War' has been permanently installed on historic Arthur Ashe Boulevard in Richmond at the entrance to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), as a recent acquisition to the museum's world-class collection. An installation ceremony will take place at VMFA on Tuesday 10 December 2019.

Wiley is best known for his vibrant portrayals of contemporary African-American and African-Diasporic individuals that subvert the hierarchies and conventions of European and American portraiture. 'Rumors of War', his largest work to date, continues Wiley’s career-long investigation of the politics of representation, race, gender and power. With this new sculpture, Wiley returns to equestrian portraiture to engage its complicated visual rhetoric of warfare and heroism on an epic scale. 

Mounted proudly on its large stone pedestal, Wiley’s monumental bronze sculpture, 'Rumors of War' is the artist’s direct response to the ubiquitous Confederate sculptures that populate the United States, particularly in the South. Standing at just under three stories tall, Wiley’s young, African-American figure is dressed in urban streetwear sitting astride a massive horse in a striking pose. 

Wiley states, “The inspiration for 'Rumors of War' is war —is an engagement with violence. Art and violence have for an eternity held a strong narrative grip with each other. 'Rumors of War' attempts to use the language of equestrian portraiture to both embrace and subsume the fetishisation of state violence. New York and Times Square in particular sit at the crossroads of human movement on a global scale. To have the 'Rumors of War' sculpture presented in such a context lays bare the scope and scale of the project in its conceit to expose the beautiful and terrible potentiality of art to sculpt the language of domination.” 

Standing as a statue to the violence afflicted against bodies every day, Wiley’s work presents a powerful visual repositioning of young black men in our public consciousness while directly engaging the national conversation around controversial monuments and their role in perpetuating incomplete narratives and contemporary inequities. In recent years, the discourse and actions around these monuments have included efforts to better contextualise them and have resulted in both the addition and removal of monuments in more than 30 states and New York City. Premiering 'Rumors of War' in Times Square situates Wiley’s work at a global crossroads of civic engagement – where the black body of Wiley’s subject can become itself the battleground for evoking change and where the epicentre of Manhattan can become a space for citizens of the city, the country, and the world to come together to discuss the most important issues of our time. 

Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins states, "We are incredibly excited to be working with Wiley, one of the most celebrated and important artists of our time, and one uniquely equipped to challenge how we use our public space, to ask the critical question of "who matters?", and to speak to the power of monuments to reflect and reinforce our values, and ultimately, reimagine our world. We are honoured to be premiering this historic work, and to join the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in supporting Wiley’s contribution to this important national conversation." 

In conjunction with this installation, Times Square Arts is happy to announce a new initiative – a team of 15 rotating Public Art Ambassadors will be stationed by the work every day from 2-8pm to host critical conversations, engage with, and act as docents for the hundreds of thousands of visitors and local New Yorkers who will encounter 'Rumors of War' each day in Times Square. 

The project originated when the artist encountered the equestrian monument to Confederate States Army general James Ewell Brown “J.E.B.” Stuart while visiting Richmond, Virginia for the opening of Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic at the VMFA in June 2016. A few blocks away from the museum is Monument Avenue, a nationally landmarked boulevard lined with Confederate statues, including monuments to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. These monuments have a particular resonance because they function to continually commemorate the Confederacy. 

The state of Virginia has more memorials to the Confederacy than any other state in the country. As with many Confederate monuments, erected in the aftermath of Reconstruction, their function was meant to not only memorialise the dead but also to reestablish a social order. This also accounts for the relatively few monuments that recognise women and people of colour, making the VMFA a powerful place to site Wiley’s historic work. 

VMFA Director Alex Nyerges states, "The installation of 'Rumors of War' at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in December will be a historic moment for our museum and for the city of Richmond. We hope that the sculpture will encourage public engagement and civic discussion about who is memorialised in our nation and the significance of monuments in the context of American history. We are especially pleased that through the acquisition of this work, the monuments in Richmond will further reflect the incredible diversity of its population." 

The Honorable Levar Stoney, Mayor of the City of Richmond, Virginia states, “The City of Richmond is proud and honored to be the future home of Kehinde Wiley’s 'Rumors of War.' We have too many monuments in our city to the Lost Cause. Now we have a beautiful sculpture that speaks emphatically to a worthy cause – the diverse and inclusive city we are and the equitable city we aspire to be, riding boldly and fearlessly into the future.” 

Wiley’s career has focused on addressing and remedying the absence of black and brown men and women in our dominant visual, historical, and cultural narratives. Wiley’s subjects have ranged from street-cast individuals the artist encountered while traveling around the world to many of the most important and well-renowned African-American figures of our generation, including The Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Carrie Mae Weems, Nick Cave, and President Barack Obama. 

In the early 2000s, the artist created a series of paintings entitled 'Rumors of War', which explored the iconography of wealth and warfare in historical paintings, drawing upon the visual language of glorification, heroism, and violence. True to his practice, these large-format paintings, inspired by the history of equestrian portraiture, anachronistically replaced the white, aristocratic subjects typical of the genre with young, African-American men in street clothes. 

At that time, these works were developed out of a reaction to the Gulf War and the Iraq Conflict. Nearly two decades later, Wiley’s new public sculpture at once serves as an important reminder that violence continues every day on our streets while simultaneously offering an exquisite example of how to imagine and enact a more complete and inclusive American story.