Examining issues of racial and sexual identity, Kehinde Wiley’s works create collisions where art history and street culture come face to face. The artist makes eroticised heroes of the invisible, those historically banished from representations of power. His work reinterprets the vocabulary of power and prestige, part politically-charged critique, part an avowed fascination with the luxury and bombast of Western symbols of male domination.
The artist has become known worldwide and was chosen by Barack Obama to paint his official presidential portrait in 2018.
Wiley graduated with an MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven in 2001 following a BFA at San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco in 1999. Ever since, he has had numerous solo exhibitions a year and been included in a many number of group exhibitions.
