"Yeah, But Whose Crown?"

In this work, Dennis addresses the question of coronation—reintroducing what authority and legitimacy actually look like when stripped of the idea, the icon, that has defined them. An alternate view is presented, confronting the question what legitimacy looks like? Dennis interrogates who gave these symbols their power; exposing the presumption embedded in the act of coronation itself: the audacity of determining who has the authority to label it, whose imagery defines the sacred.

This is the radical work of the painting: to strip these symbols and reintroduce the idea, the thought, and even insist they can mean something entirely different—that true authority might look like relationship, that real legitimacy might flow from connection, that being set apart could mean being drawn into sacred access rather than isolated in decorated sovereignty.

Yeah, but whose crown? Whose symbols? Whose claim to legitimacy? And what could these symbols become if we refused the theocratic economy that made them weapons—and insisted instead on painting them as invitations to relationship, as markers of connection, as evidence that true authority has always been about access, not dominance?

You can watch a short video with the artist Here

You can watch a short video of the artwork Here