Visual artist Kehinde Wiley’s latest and greatest exhibit, “The World Stage: Africa, Lagos-Dakar,” opens this summer at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The artist’s journey in creating this prolific body of work has been an exploration in black male identity, representation and self.
At 31, Kehinde Wiley, the Brooklyn-based visual artist, has shaken up the international art scene with his highly ornate, large-scale portraits of young African-American men. Donned in the latest urban attire, his figures are then painted in poses taken from the portraiture of Old Masters such as 16th-century Italian Renaissance painter Titian and 18th-century English portrait artist Thomas Gainsborough.
This juxtaposition of young black men assuming the postures of European nobility lends itself to the (re)examination of identity, status and power in society. It asks not only “Who is entitled to it?” but also “Who decides entitlement?”
“My earlier work became placed with the reduction ‘hip-hop meets Old Masters,’” says Wiley. “I never understood why when dealing with the young black male body it is immediately reduced to hip-hop. Now it’s about broadening that conversation, which looks at black and brown, and how identity comes about not only culturally but historically.”
For more Kehinde, click here to see our exclusive photo gallery of his work!
