Kehinde Wiley has launched a $120 black T-shirt bearing the phrase “aesthetically terrifying” in direct response to the Trump administration removing his artwork from the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic, per artnews.com.
The controversy surrounds Wiley’s 2013 painting Young Artists After Siamesas 1960, which was commissioned by the State Department during the Obama administration.
Erin Scavino, director of Art in Embassies, recently described the piece as “aesthetically terrifying” during a podcast interview.
Meanwhile, unearthed April audio revealed US Ambassador Leah Campos criticizing the work in Spanish as a depiction of a “picnic in a park with flowers and some lesbians,” while falsely claiming the Biden administration sought to push that ideology onto the Dominican people.
Wiley addressed the removal on his official e-commerce Instagram account by releasing the branded T-shirt, which borrows Scavino’s critical label. A post accompanying the item framed it as a response, a reclamation, and a reminder that art has never needed permission to be provocative.
The Trump administration has been actively swapping embassy artworks to reflect American patriotism. In August, Campos posted on Instagram about replacing Wiley’s painting with an image of the American flag paired with the song “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Similar removals are occurring domestically, including the dismantling of Joel Shapiro’s 24-foot-tall sculpture Blue at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts following President Trump’s takeover of the facility.