# @sfmoma on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DFLzcQozRvU
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/33376587-sfmoma-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/77b628367e.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-01-23T22:12:49.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** SFMOMA (@sfmoma) — https://gondola.cc/sfmoma

## Caption

How do the choices we make affect how others perceive us?

Many of Sherald’s portraits often speak of a split between a person’s inner life and the face they show to the world—a recurring theme that connects the works shown here. This separation might be an intentional choice someone makes to express different identities through varying clothes, attitudes, or body language. Alternatively, it might be an involuntary or self-protective response to cope with the biases or assumptions of others. 

In 1897, sociologist and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote of the “double-consciousness” experienced by Black people living in American society, describing it as a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” These paintings make visible the state Du Bois describes, honoring the difficulty of double consciousness while also offering images of empowered subjects holding the gazes of others and embodying their complex personal experiences.

📍 See “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” on Floor 4. 

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[Amy Sherald, “Well Prepared and Maladjusted,” 2008 © Amy Sherald; Photo by Ryan Stevenson; Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth; Amy Sherald, “Try on dreams until I find the one that fits me. They all fit me,” 2017, collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, museum purchase made possible by a gift from the Bebe and Crosby Kemper Foundation © Amy Sherald; Amy Sherald, “She had an inside and an outside now, and suddenly she knew how not to mix them,” 2018, courtesy of Hauser and Wirth © Amy Sherald] #AmySherald #WEBDuBois #Portrait #SanFrancisco #BayArea

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## Tags

webdubois, portrait, sanfrancisco, bayarea, amysherald

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