"There are no tyrannies that would not try to limit art, because they can see the power of art. Art can tell the world things that cannot be shared otherwise. It is art that conveys feelings."

 - Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine 

Kerry James Marshall

So This is What You Want?, 1992
Painting , 83.8 x 81.3 cm cm
acrylic, collage, canvas

The paintings So this what you want? (1992) and Stigma Stigmata (1992) are full of religious references, for example to early Renaissance and Byzantine Christian images of saints, emphasized by the golden aureoles around the women's heads, the red crosses and the stigmata. Other references can be made to (white) beauty ideals and the role of (black) women in our society. The collage technique allows that all elements can stand beside each other in a balanced composition. Despite the placing of these symbols in proximity to one another and the constant re-working of his canvases, Marshall succeeds in making a non-hierarchical and surprising synthesis between form and content.