Telvin Wallace and the Devine Mercy

Telvin Wallace’s paintings and drawings inhabit the space between seeing and being seen, where identity is constantly negotiated and reshaped. In The Spook Who Sat by the Door Vol. II, Wallace reimagines Sam Greenlee’s incendiary novel and 1973 film with the same name as a meditation on invisibility turned into resistance. The word “spook,” both slur and code for spy, becomes a cipher for W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness: the “two-ness” of Black identity shaped under the constant burden of the white gaze. As viewers step into this charged threshold, every glance carries history, and every shadow hums with defiance.

Wallace’s figures move through dark and light, rendered with meticulous attention to color’s psychological presence. They inhabit liminal spaces, both seen and unseen, their stoic gazes masking a fierce interiority. Much like Greenlee’s protagonist, who learns to weaponize the racialized systems designed to contain him, these portraits turn subjugation into a vantage point for liberation. Stereotypes of subservience are turned inside out, revealing a depth of intelligence gained by those who are meant to disappear.

Every portrait and gesture reflect a consciousness split between self-knowledge and imposed identity, exposing Wallace’s intentional weaving of Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness within the exhibition. Wallace’s subject, my likeness, carry this psychological weight in their posture and gaze, embodying the tension of a life lived in constant negotiation. This “second sight” becomes a sharpened tool, allowing Wallace’s subjects, and by extension, his viewers, to recognize and navigate the architecture of oppression. This doubled perspective, far from a burden, becomes a site of strategy, offering clarity about the systems that attempt to define and confine Blackness. What appears subdued is alive with resolve.

Wallace, in his layering of light over darkness, imbues every figure with a spiritual gravity. His work suggests that transcendence is forged through struggle, that every shadow carries the trace of illumination. The Spook Who Sat by the Door Vol. II challenges viewers to reckon with visibility as a weapon, survival as scheme, and Black identity as both mask and mirror. Wallace invites us to witness this quiet revolution: a reclamation of narrative power through observation, presence, and the alchemy of paint.

Text by Dr Charles Moore