We Speak In Parables

American Sublime is the personification of Black American life. It is the experience of living in a country that often struggles to acknowledge the harm done to Black and Brown communities while simultaneously claiming those communities as part of its national identity. It is the tension of having an experience that is continually questioned, minimized, or erased. When speaking your truth sounds threatening to those around you, you begin to speak in symbols, in metaphors, in parables that only those who have lived it can fully understand, to point out these contradictions. That is Sheralds American Sublime. A story of great awe-inspiring realities and aesthetics, paired with imagery and titles that cause you to retract a bit. It could have been called American Ambivalence.

Fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like, 2014. Oil on Canvas

I so distinctly remember the first time I experienced this contradiction. It was in 2020 amidst the George Floyd protests. I was a summer camp counsellor that summer. The first day of camp, after a week of training, began with breakfast and announcements right outside the lodge. Suddenly, the flag was raised, and everyone stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. I was never told this would happen; it was obviously overlooked because no one was thinking that there was a non-American who didn’t know what was happening. It was so jarring it felt like I was in the middle of a strange ritual. The nation’s ideals were being blared, and met with a reality that doesn’t support them. Things so far apart that art becomes the only language capable of holding both at once. This is the power of the American Sublime. It is an astonishing gap.

The words:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all

were piercing to me, at a time when it felt like half of the country did not understand why the other half of the country was angry. I had only been in the country three years at that time, but I could understand it. However, so many born and raised here could not, and that baffled me. Then, for those people who would not understand why people were protesting police brutality, to stand up and say those words.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all…

Then, when justice is demanded for all, people get defensive. It just did not make sense to me, but maybe that is why we speak in parables. There will always be someone unwilling to understand your position.

Amy Sherald’s exhibition American Sublime explores exactly this tension. Sherald’s portraits are beautiful, direct, and dignified, yet they also contain layers of meaning that exist beneath the surface. The exhibition itself carries this quality. Sherald’s show was originally slated to open at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery but became the subject of controversy after concerns were raised about one of the works, a depiction of the Statue of Liberty as a Black trans woman.

Amy Sherald, ”Trans Forming Liberty” (2024) (© Amy Sherald; photo by Kelvin Bulluck, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth)

Even this work, Trans Forming Liberty, 2024, perfectly exemplifies the contradiction. On the title card, lives the phrase that is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. - Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”(1883)

Sherald has a clear understanding of the way that our trans sisters and brothers are treated in this country. Using the symbol of American freedom, the Statue of Liberty, Sherald is calling us to examine how well we are living up to the promise to keep safe those who are ‘yearning to breathe free.’ It is, in my opinon a genius and masterful juxtaposition, especially paired with the pink hair and royal blue dress. The piece says I am here, a declaration of its presence, strikingly loud, unapologetic, and graceful. The semi-analogous palette on this piece also calms one down because it feels harmonious, while calling attention to the piece, too, with intense hot pink. It is a perfect tie-in to the American Sublime, loud, glorious, while also being graceful and majestic.

What’s precious inside of him does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence (All American), 2017, oil on canvas.

The work of Amy Sherald is not only breathtaking in detail and technical skills. There is a thoughtfulness to what is being portrayed and what is being said. So many layers are packed in the title as well. This adds to the sublime element; you read it and it hits you so hard knowing that experience. One that really rocked my boat was, Fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like, The title alone stopped me in my tracks. How many people move through America with a deep understanding of how others see them, yet without the same understanding of themselves? There is something profoundly Black about that experience, but there is also something profoundly American about it. The map exists for some people and not for others. This is explored in depth with the double consciousness theory that W.E.B Dubois talked about in The Souls of Black Folks.

This quality is not limited to visual art. It exists at the heart of the American experience and especially within Black American artistic traditions. Artists have long found ways to express truths that could not always be spoken directly. You can hear it in Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé, an album that reclaims a genre from which Black artists have often been excluded despite their foundational role in creating it. You can hear it in the music of Sly and the Family Stone, OutKast, and Jon Batiste. Each artist approaches the question differently, but all of them wrestle with belonging, exclusion, memory, and reclamation.

I think about this so often that I made a Spotify playlist called My Fourth of July. It is a collection of songs that capture the complicated feeling of loving a country that does not always love you back. The music is celebratory, critical, joyful, and mournful all at once. Like Sherald’s portraits, it insists on being seen. Like the American Sublime itself, it transforms contradiction into something beautiful.

What do you do when you watch a system disenfranchise people for generations? Forty acres and a mule were never given to formerly enslaved Black Americans, even though they were promised them. Slave owners, meanwhile, were compensated for the loss of what they considered property. Years later, conversations emerge about extending grace, compensation, or understanding to people who challenged democratic institutions themselves, which really shows you that it is not about possibility but about desire.

I could spend pages unpacking those contradictions. But perhaps that is part of the American Sublime. The truth is often spoken indirectly, through allusion, through omission, through a raised eyebrow and a knowing glance. PBS did this excellently with the most recent documentary that I enjoyed, Exposing the myth of Southern Charm. Everyone knows the story being told, even when no one says it outright.

Amy Sherald understands this. Her paintings rarely shout. They do not need to. The contradiction is already there, waiting for anyone willing to see it. That is the beauty of the American Sublime: it is a space to hold the contradiction and make it beautiful and grand. It is alchemy.