English-born artist Esiri Erheriene-Essi seeks to represent cultural capital and the influence of celebrity in her painting, “Born to Hula.” She pulls imagery from pop culture, political discussion, and subversive commentary to challenge museumgoers. 

Kasteel Well students taking the History of Art After World War II course visited the Stedelijk Museum during their Amsterdam academic excursion on Sept. 21. Erheriene-Essi spoke with The Beacon about her piece, “Born to Hula.”

“Born to Hula” is a painting in a series of three that Erheriene-Essi calls “SCUM Manifesto condensed into three quotes.” The pieces feature text from Valerie Solanas’s “SCUM Manifesto,” a feminist text published in 1967 alongside three iconic American women: Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, and Jackie Kennedy. 

The title of the work is from the title of a song by the American rock band Queens of the Stone Age, which Erheriene-Essi often listened to while painting the piece.  

“All three paintings were named after the band’s songs … which I wanted to leave open for the viewer to interpret and discover the song and its lyrics, and perhaps find another layer of meaning,” Erheriene-Essi said.  

One of Erherine-Essi’s additional inspirations, Solanas, believed all men had ruined the world and it was up to women to fix it again. When Erheriene-Essi was fresh out of art school 12 years ago, she began to explore themes in her art like playing with celebrity culture, remixing, appropriation, and “playing” with source material.

Erheriene-Essi read “SCUM Manifesto” for a radical texts class at the University of East London and wondered whether the text would be considered “less radical” if someone else with more “cultural capital” had written it.  

“I took three different famous women: Diana Ross, Jackie Kennedy, and Elizabeth Taylor, and used their platform to say Valerie’s words,” she said. “It made more sense with the three paintings together but my gallery at the time sold this painting on its own. That collector gave the work to the Stedelijk and now Elizabeth has to hold the fort all by herself.” 

“Born to Hula” is very different from the art Erheriene-Essi is better known for. It is a diversion from what the artist had said about her work previously, that she was “interested in producing images centered on blackness occupying multiple spaces.” 

This concept is illustrated in another piece of hers in the Stedelijk Museum called “Barricade.” 

Erheriene-Essi said “Barricade” was created in 2012 when she was simultaneously painting Black and white folks on canvas. She recalled visiting a Kerry James Marshall gallery in Antwerp, Belgium, and from there, committed to producing works centered around Blackness due to the “vast imbalance of Black figures on canvas in canonical art history.” 

Erherine-Essi painted “Born to Hula” before this shift in her artistic creation. 

 “I used [Solanas’] text, as well as text by Assata Shakur, the Black Panther Party, and Coco Chanel to play with the idea that if you change the messenger,” she continued, “would the message still be read as outrageous or crazy or ‘political,’ or would it change to reflect the moral compass of the speaker?” 

Erheriene-Essi’s work can be found in galleries across the world. She currently has paintings on view at the 21c Museum Hotel in Cincinnati until September 2025 and in the Princeton University Art Museum collection in New Jersey.