Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley is a New York-based portrait painter known for his naturalistic paintings of Black people, often referencing Old Master paintings. Kehinde Wiley engages the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, powerful, majestic and sublime in his representation of black and brown young men around the world. His work depicts his slightly larger than life-size figures in a heroic manner, giving them poses that connote power and spiritual awakening. 

The artist’s subjects interrupt tropes of portrait painting, often blurring the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation and the critical portrayal of masculinity and physicality as it pertains to the view of African men across countries.

Wiley’s portraits were initially based on photographs taken of young men found on the streets of Harlem. As his practice grew, he was led towards an international view, including models found in urban landscapes throughout the world – such as Mumbai, Senegal, Dakar and Rio de Janeiro, among others. This vast body of work became known as, “The World Stage.” It had models dressed in their everyday clothing in poses found in artwork from their location’s history. 

Wiley was born in Los Angeles, California to a Nigerian father, Isaiah D. Obot and an African-American mother, Freddie Mae Wiley. He received a bachelor’s degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and a master’s degree from Yale University, School of Art in 2001. He later became an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

The artist has received several accolades for his work. He was included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2018 and was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former US President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all previous American presidents. 

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In October 2011, he received the Artist of the Year Award from the New York City Art Teachers Association/United Federation of Teachers and also received Canteen Magazine’s Artist of the Year Award. In the same year, two of his paintings were featured on the top of 500 New York City taxi cabs as a collaboration with the Art Production Fund.

There’s more about Kehinde Wiley on kehindewiley.com