Death of Hyacinth Playing Cards

This deck of cards features Kehinde Wiley’s 2022 painting titled The Death of Hyacinth (Ndey Buri Mboup), first exhibited in Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence at Foundazione Giorgio Cini in 2022, as a collateral event of the 59th international art exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Expanding on Kehinde Wiley's body of work DOWN from 2008, which was initially inspired by Hans Holbein the Younger's The Dead Christ in the Tomb as well as historical paintings and sculptures of fallen warriors and figures in the state of repose, Wiley created an unsettling series of prone Black bodies, re-conceptualizing classical pictorial forms to create a contemporary version of monumental portraiture, resounding with violence, pain, and death, as well as ecstasy.