Black Artist's 'Woke' Portrait Removed From US Embassy

In today’s episode of Is…Is The ‘Woke’ In The Room With Us? the U.S. State Department has removed a portrait created by renowned artist Kehinde Wiley that it commissioned for the US embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and, as far as anyone can tell, it has been labeled as “woke,” “very woke,” and a symbol of “globalist and woke ideologies” because there are Black people in it. Or because Wiley was also the artist who was responsible for the official White House portrait of President Barack Obama. Or because white people think the artist is anti-white.

Or maybe it’s simply the fact that white nationalist bigotry is a global phenomenon, which means all of the above could suffice as justification for the portrait’s removal.

By the way, here’s the “very woke” portrait in question.

According to The New York Times, this portrait, which features four Dominican models against a floral backdrop, was commissioned by the federal government in 2013. State Department officials removed the painting, titled “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960,” from the embassy last week, and now they’re reportedly considering their options for selling it.

So far, all these officials are simply tossing the word “woke” around, but not elaborating at all about what makes the portrait so.

From the Times:

Erin Scavino, the director of Art in Embassies, criticized Wiley’s painting in a recent podcast interview and pointed out the artist’s connection to Obama. Leah Campos, the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic, celebrated its removal on social media with a video playing the rock anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” writing that the painting was an example of “globalist and woke ideologies.”

Neither elaborated on what she found objectionable.

So, the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic thinks a portrait is “woke,” apparently because it — *check notes* — features Dominicans. And she, as a U.S. ambassador in a foreign country, is expressing her disdain for — *checks notes again* — globalism.

“In the Trump Administration and under my leadership, we are turning away from globalist and woke ideologies and instead embracing American patriotism and the beauty of our great country!” Campos wrote on Instagram.

Again, this is a U.S. embassy occupying a country that is not the United States of America. WTF do we even have embassies for if we hate the rest of the world this much?

“It was very woke. It was by the gentleman who did Obama’s portrait, and it was aesthetically terrifying,” Scavino said.

Aesthetically terrifying? I mean, tell me you call the police on Black people just for existing without telling me you call the police on Black people just for existing.

Meanwhile, a State Department spokesperson released a statement that didn’t address the portrait itself, but attacked the artist instead.

More from the Times:

In a statement on Monday about the removal of the painting, a State Department spokeswoman did not directly address the artwork. The statement instead criticized comments Wiley had made in 2023 about his “Judith and Holofernes” painting, which he described as “a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing.” It also cited accusations of sexual assault that Wiley has denied.

“The work of an individual with such violent and racist words and depictions has no place in the America First State Department,” the spokeswoman said.

Ahhh, so basically, we can’t defend calling the portrait “woke” without just flat-out saying, “Look, there’s Black people in it,” so we attack the Black artist instead as a retrofitted excuse for its removal. Well, fine, let’s unpack all that as well.

First, let’s talk about the “Judith and Holofernes” painting.

According to NCMALearn, the 2012 painting “reimagines a biblical story in which a woman saves her town by killing the general of an invading army.” The outlet also noted that the portrait is Wiley’s modern take on a 17th-century painting by Giovanni Baglione, and that “the beheading of Holofernes by Judith has been depicted in paintings and sculptures throughout history.”

But Judith, in this painting, is portrayed as a powerful Black woman who is holding the severed head of a white woman, and that’s all the white and eternally fragile needed to see in order to feel persecuted, because white people wanting to be oppressed so badly is also a global phenomenon.

According to Wiley, the model for Judith in this painting is a woman he met in a shopping mall in downtown Brooklyn, and the model for the head of Holofernes is one of his assistants.

“What I’m doing is playing with the language of power that has existed in Western easel painting for hundreds of years, and I’m trying to use certain aspects of that to my own purposes,” Wiley said of the painting, according to NCMALearn. But the only quote snowflake Caucasians care about is Wiley vaguely describing his work, in part, as “a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing.”

Ironically, white conservatives are obsessed with their fear of anti-whiteness, which seems to be a phenomenon they don’t understand, despite their loud, proud, and constant expressions of fear and hatred for Black people, Black cultures, and other non-white people and cultures all over the world. These are people who think an Islamic takeover is happening in the U.S. just because Muslims exist here. They gleefully support the most outwardly bigoted president in any of our lifetimes, adhere to the white nationalist Great Replacement Theory as if they have some inherent right to represent the majority in the U.S. — and for white culture, whatever that is, to be the dominant culture — then they wonder why non-white people have so much contempt for them.

As for Wiley being accused of sexual assault, which he denies, well, that certainly would be a justifiable reason to remove his work — if it weren’t being used by the administration of an adjudicated rapist who has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women, is mentioned in the Epstein files too many times to count, at this point, has made numerous lewd, sexual comments about and to the faces of women and girls, including his own daughters, and has been accused by at least one Jeffrey Epstein victim of assaulting her when she was 13 years old.

Again, they should just say they’re afraid of Blackness and be done with it. They wouldn’t be surprising anyone.

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