Museum Visit- Kahinde Whiley "Smile" By Timothy Bates

What did you find creative?

       

     I found that one of the most creative concepts to this work was its simplicity. It was a very unique yet simple way that Whiley used to express this artwork. People smiling. Nothing much more simple than that. And yet it is often the simplest things that have the most power. The longer I watched the video the more I began to think about the meaning of a smile. A genuine heartfelt smile is often an expression of an individual’s state of happiness. Many times smiles are forced onto our faces because of humor and joy. Which lead me to the unpleasant realization, based from the description of the work, that these “masks” of smiles were to be a reminder of a century-long racist practice in American theater tradition. By mocking something as pure and sincere as a smile, Whiley is able to remind the viewer that although many people are wearing smiles on the outside, there is still pain and sorrow on the inside. I thought that was incredibly creative use of smiles.

How did he come up with the idea?

            One possibility is that he realized that smiles don’t really mean what they should mean anymore. I think of all the pictures of smiling people flooding social media and how they act as a mask to cover what is really going on in their lives. It is essentially the same thing that the minstrels were doing in the theater. By showing more than one man smiling, the viewer is unable to escape the smiling faces, because as soon as you look away from one you have three others to see.