Michaela de Prince
- Partners for Historical Justice
- Jan 16
- 2 min read
Updated: Jan 21
Title
Michaela de Prince
Artist
Kyanna Cole
Location
Capital Hill Boys Club Intergenerational Gallery, 16th and Marion Barry Ave, SE, Washington DC
On the Capital Hill Boys Club, see
Background
The artist was deeply moved by the tragic story of the ballet dancer Michaela de Prince, who had been a war orphan in Sierra Leone, then became a ballet dancer in the US and Europe, and died under undisclosed circumstances at age 29, in 2024. Kyanna Cole (@kycode83) paints her as a winged angel, her wings made out of glittering ice or glass-like forms. Below are the shattered shards of a reflective mirror, evocative of the spreading gossamer wings. Above her head floats a crown or halo. DePrince (born Mabinty Bangura) recalls in her memoirs that as a child she was deeply stigmatized due to her skin condition of vitiligo, which led to pigment loss on sections of her skin; here the artist celebrates the condition with multicolored hues across the dancer’s face and arms.
Interpretive Note
DePrince may function here as a kind of guardian angel, looking over and protecting all the girls and young women who gather here to pursue their love of art and learning.
Prompts for Closer Looking:
As a child, DePrince was stigmatized due to her condition of vitiligo: how has the artist visually recast this condition into something positive? Are the multicolored hues on her skin evocative of creative energies pulsing through her?
Consider the relationship between the glass-like angel wings and the shattered mirror glass below. Are we in some sense beholding DePrince through the Looking Glass, seeing her in the Other World? Are the piles of glass perhaps also evocative of clouds in her new heavenly abode?
What is conveyed by the look in DePrince’s eyes as she laces or tightens up her ballet shoes?
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