"I felt like I could say something with my artwork that would shift the narrative from negative to positive." -- Kyle Kow Yearwood
BALTIMORE, Maryland -- Freelance visual artist Kyle Yearwood grew up fixated on magic.
He was entranced with the Harry Potter novels and inspired by mystical and adventurous films like “Forrest Gump,” “ Big Fish” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” that challenged the depths of reality and imagination. But when it came to cultural figures that looked like him — an African-American male in Baltimore — the images weren’t as endearing, he said. It affected his self-esteem, he said.
“When we grow up, we're fed so many visions of what happiness is, and I think a lot of people when they become an adult, they wake up one day and it's not how they envisioned as a kid, especially being African-American. You get to a point where you live out all the things you heard about in terms of discrimination, lack of resources in your community, or just not feeling equal,” he said.
“The music I was listening to, the images of black people that I was shown, it wasn't empowering. It wasn't anything that made me feel good about myself, so I was really conditioned to not love myself.”
The Morgan State University alumnus has gone on to make a career of uplifting imagery, some of which has made a significant impact in social media: Last month, his piece “I heard the Black girls in Baltimore can fly,” which pictures three young African-American girls holding hands as they slowly propel higher and higher in the air within a Northeast Baltimore neighborhood, went viral.
This week, Yearwood went viral again after transforming a controversial H&M ad that depicted a young black boy in a sweatshirt that said “coolest monkey in the jungle.”
CONTINUE READING
No comments:
Post a Comment