Kehinde Wiley: “The World Stage: Lagos – Dakar

The Brooklyn-based painter Kehinde Wiley has made a name with his large scale portraits of African-American men (with few exceptions non-professional models literally picked on the street) dressed in urban style painted in poses taken from the portraiture of Old European Masters. For his latest project, Wiley set up satellite studios in big cities outside the US — in India, China, Brazil and West Africa — to extend that work. The Africa leg of that work “The World Stage: Africa, Lagos-Dakar” will be on show at the Studio Museum in Harlem from early next month (see here for more details). In an interview with the New York-based GIANT magazine, Wiley said he picked Nigeria for its significance as a large oil state and Senegal “as a place many Americans visit to go back to their roots.” [Wiley’s dad, btw, is from Nigeria.] The difference with the Africa series is that Wiley “presents his subjects in poses taken from post-colonial sculptures specific to the Nigerian city of Lagos and Senegal’s capital Dakar, rather than European paintings.” To see some of the images, see the GIANT website here.

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