Kehinde Wiley was already well into his influential art career when his portrait of Barack Obama — arms crossed, perched on a chair amid brilliant foliage — was unveiled in 2018. But there’s no doubt it changed the artist’s life.
— arms crossed, perched on a chair amid brilliant foliage — was unveiled in 2018. But there’s no doubt it changed the artist’s life.
“I wonder if I will ever be able to do anything that lives up to the gravity of that moment,” he says. “Everybody wants to be seen in a number of different contexts ... but I mean, what a great project to be involved in. So, come on, here’s the world’s smallest violin, playing just for me.” In between, he was in Africa, where he’s been doing everything from negotiating prices with vendors to selecting stone for the floors while building his second artist residency campus on the continent, Black Rock Nigeria, in Calabar .
Wiley had just returned from Ethiopia, and before that Nigeria. The rhythm of his travels, he says, goes like this: “You’ll be on the road working on something and you’ll be in some amazing place and there’s a couple of down days, and then you’re in some extraordinary part of the world. I guess work and play are all kind of intertwined. But I’m also incredibly hungry for new experiences.”
During his 2015 visit, Wiley visited the Escuela Nacional de Circo Cuba — a circus school. He became intrigued by the idea of “not fully formed technicians, this metaphor of not quite being quite perfect at creating magic.” During his second visit, he met with performers from Raices Profundas, a nearly 50-year-old dance ensemble that performs in the Yoruba tradition.
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Kehinde Wiley is taking his art everywhere, all at onceKehinde Wiley wonders aloud if he’ll ever reach a career moment of such import and gravity as his famous 2018 portrait of Barack Obama, which has drawn crowds around the United States. But he’s continuing to expand his cultural influence — seemingly everywhere all at once. He currently has shows running on both coasts, at San Francisco’s de Young Museum and at the Sean Kelly gallery in New York. He is also building a second artist residency in Africa, this one in Nigeria to add to one in Senegal. And he has another big show heading for a Paris museum in the fall.
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