NOCCA Visual Arts Student Selected As Finalist In Prestigious YoungArts Competition

New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) Visual Arts student and Hammond High Magnet senior, Khalil McKnight was notified by the National YoungArts Foundation that he has been chosen as a YoungArts Finalist.

Khalil will travel to Miami in January for National YoungArts Week to collaborate with peers and exhibit his work. As a finalist in his senior year, he is also eligible for nomination as a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts-one of the nation’s highest honors for high school students.

The YoungArts program has been identifying, recognizing and inspiring America’s most outstanding young artists since 1981.

Artist Statement

My work centers around the idea of police brutality and the inescapability of racial stereotypes. Inspired by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, I depict myself in situations where I’m either unable to be recognized as an individual, or am only recognized by the clothing I wear. Unfit to free myself from the shackles of prejudice, I look into the eyes of viewers, pleading to them, yet showing acceptance by my disposition to the inevitability of my oppression. Black hoodies and the naked, vulnerable, body are a common motif throughout my work. The juxtaposition between clothed and unclothed ironically illustrate how stereotypes strip us of our unique identities and force us to conform to society’s ideals of the black male.