Peace Sis 2019

Monica Ikegwu created this work, “Peace Sis,” with oil paint to produce an image that seems on first viewing to capture something straightforward, a young woman posing for a picture. But look closer: Ikegwu made this painting in the twenty-first century, and its power comes from an interrogation of what it means for a Black woman to make an image of a Black woman, engaging with a long history of painting’s exclusion and marginalization of Black subjects. The woman’s cool gaze, modern clothes, and the titular peace sign, all position the sitter as cool, contemporary, in control, and powerful. Art history gives us a glimpse of what was possible in the past, but it also illuminates what can emerge when artists challenge the conventions of the institutions of art, broadening the range of representation itself. To understand this painting, we must look to the social and art histories of portraiture.