Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley, born in 1977 in Los Angeles, reimagines classical portraiture by centering Black and brown subjects in spaces from which they’ve historically been excluded. Drawing on Old Master traditions and baroque grandeur, Wiley replaces aristocrats and generals with everyday people dressed in contemporary fashion and framed in ornate, often floral backdrops. His work interrogates who gets remembered, revered, and monumentalized in the canon of Western art.

Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps: Wiley’s modern twist on Jacques-Louis David’s classic painting, substituting a Black subject in streetwear.

Wiley’s portraits are both homage and subversion. A man in a hoodie poses like a 17th-century noble; a woman in streetwear echoes Renaissance grace. These figures command space, unapologetically powerful, unsettling the hierarchies of race, class, and visibility. His 2018 portrait of Barack Obama was a seismic moment in American art history: the first official presidential portrait painted by a Black artist, representing the first Black president.

The works presented in Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic raise questions about race, gender, and the politics of representation by portraying contemporary African American men and women using the conventions of traditional European portraiture.

His globe-spanning project 'The World Stage' expands this vision, inviting models from across Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America to inhabit historical poses and reclaim visual narratives. Whether through painting, public sculpture, or performance-based photography, Wiley’s work is a reclamation of presence, a way of saying that Black lives belong not just in history books, but in history’s frame.

This body of work is informed by Wiley’s focus on the evolution of Black culture globally. Inspired by two visits Wiley made to Cuba, this new body of work explores the phenomenon of the carnivalesque in Western culture.

Wiley is also a mentor and institution-builder. In 2019, he founded Black Rock Senegal, a multidisciplinary artist residency in Dakar. From exhibitions in Venice to commissions in New York train stations, his art exists across continents and cultures. Through rich color, technical mastery, and radical intentionality, Kehinde Wiley transforms portraiture into protest, and turns visibility into power.

Kehinde Wiley in his studio, standing confidently in front of a large, colorful canvas with floral designs.

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Dig Deeper

New York-based artist Kehinde Wiley did not see himself reflected on the walls of the world's great museums, so he set out to create classical-style paintings featuring men and women of color, often echoing masterworks. Rita Braver meets with the artist and tours a new exhibition of his work.

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