Gerald Williams, When Will it Ever End: Kavi Gupta | Elizabeth St.

This painting by AFRICOBRA founder Gerald Williams portrays 45 pairs of eyes radiating from within concentric orbs, all hovering over an abstracted, pointillist landscape. The eyes belong to Black victims of police shootings. The last thing these eyes saw on this earth was their murderer; the last experience these humans were part of was an act of violence, hate, and fear. Williams has devoted his career to creating positive images of Black family. His artistic position captures the emotive experiential state that exists at the intersection of abstraction and figuration. The background of this painting embodies that aspect of Williams’s distinctive aesthetic language, what he has called “mimesis at midpoint.” The overt use of the medium of photographic collage in this piece is a rare departure for Williams. The collaged eyes are literally ripped from the headlines, forcing us to confront the perception the public has of these victims. Williams captures the individual humanity conveyed by each individual set of eyes, while also placing the singular deaths of these human beings in context with what is clearly an ongoing genocide.