On emotion, appearance, and Unapologetic Faces
I’ve said that our faces tell a story before we say a word. Right now, I’m experiencing that in a way I didn’t expect.
Recently, I had a fainting spell at home by myself. I still don’t know what caused it. I fell, needed stitches, and my teeth shifted.
My face changed. And yes, I’m concerned about how I look. I don’t think admitting that makes me shallow. Our faces are personal. It’s unsettling when something happens to the face you’re used to seeing.
But the appearance is only part of what I’m carrying.
What someone looking at me cannot see
I keep thinking about being alone when it happened. What if I hadn’t woken up? What if I had fallen backward and hit my head?
Those are the thoughts I’ve been sitting with. The fear and sadness are part of this experience too, even though someone looking at my face cannot know all of that.
They can see the injury before I explain it. They cannot see everything it means to me.
That has made me think about how quickly we judge what a face tells us. We notice what has changed or what doesn’t look the way we expect. Sometimes we stop there. There is a whole experience behind the appearance that we haven’t asked about.
I’m reminding myself of that, too. I can care about my face and still recognize that what happened to me deserves more attention than how I look afterward.
I create altered faces. Now I’m looking at my own.
There’s an irony here that I can’t ignore.
In my work, I manipulate and deconstruct faces. I make decisions about their structure, expression, and color to communicate an emotion. Now I’m looking at changes in my own face that I didn’t choose.
I’m experiencing the vulnerability I keep returning to in Unapologetic Faces: The Cost of Being Seen.
The series existed before this happened. It already dealt with identity, self-protection, and the things we reveal without intending to. This experience has brought those questions closer. It has reminded me why the emotion in the work matters so much to me.
A face can draw your attention because of how it looks. I want to give you a reason to stay with it.
The emotion has to be there
I’m Corey Wesley, the artist behind Milton Wes Art in Harlem. I create contemporary figurative works built around archetypes. The people depicted never existed, yet viewers regularly tell me they recognize themselves or someone they know.
That recognition interests me. An unfamiliar face can bring you close to something you understand.
My flagship works are printed on archival aluminum. The surface, the contrast, and the way the work responds to light are part of its physical presence. I pay attention to those decisions. But I also need the face to carry the feeling that brought me to the work.
When someone lives with a piece from Unapologetic Faces, there is time to look again. An expression might seem different after an experience of their own. They may notice something they passed over before.
I’m still processing what happened to me. I don’t have a neat lesson to put around it. I know that I’m feeling the weight of an experience someone else might see only as a change in my appearance.
My face tells part of the story. I’m still finding the words for the rest.
Explore the work: Unapologetic Faces on archival aluminum.
