KEHINDE WILEY

Early Years

Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles in 1977. Keen to distance her sons from the violence of South Central, Wiley’s mother enrolled them in an arts programme at weekends. He has said that he “fell in love” with portraiture, but also that his twin brother was “a lot better” at the discipline. He remembers going to Huntington Library or the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and seeing traditional portraiture and then creating self-portraits placing himself in the role of those paintings’ subjects. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, gaining his BFA in 1999, and then at Yale for his MFA, where he refined and reassessed his thoughts on portraiture, expanding his interest to the portrayal of Black men in America.

Kehinde Wiley: Artworks

Kehinde Wiley uses familiar visual themes from portraiture—wealth, prestige, history—but centres Black and brown men in his paintings. He began this practice by basing paintings on photographs of young men on the streets of Harlem, set against opulent floral backgrounds, but the project evolved into a global-facing body of work called The World Stage (exhibited 2007–2014), featuring people from places ranging from Dakar to Rio de Janeiro and giving the power of the portrait to young men often overlooked in both art and society. In 2012, Wiley switched focus and produced a series featuring women. An Economy of Grace put African American women in poses familiar from society portraits by Thomas Gainsborough or Jacques-Louis David but, rather than the subjects wearing their own clothes, he collaborated with Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci to design long dresses, celebrating Black women in a white-dominated art world.

Kehinde Wiley has also painted portraits of famous figures, notably President Obama, and produced sculptural pieces.

• One of Wiley’s most celebrated portraits of a young Black man is Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps (2005), part of his Rumours of War series and based on a Jacques-Louis David painting. The star of the picture, identified only as “Williams”, sits defiantly astride a horse, backed by an opulent gold-and-red wallpaper.
• 2012’s Judith and Holofernes and Judith Beheading Holofernes once again flip the traditional narrative of how Bible stories are depicted in art. The story of Judith beheading an adversary has been painted by artists including Caravaggio, but Wiley gives a Black woman the starring role, with the head of Holofernes that of a white woman.
• In 2021, Wiley showed The Prelude at the National Gallery in London; inspired by the landscapes and seascapes already in the venue’s collection, he painted Black men and women sat against scenes based on Norwegian fjords, presenting a more muted palette than his familiar bright backdrops.

Kehinde Wiley: Select Awards

• Canteen Magazine, Artist of the Year Award (2002)
• Americans for the Arts, Young Artist Award for Artistic Excellence (2008)
• New York City Art Teachers Association/United Federation of Teachers, Artist of the Year Award (2011)
• Pratt Legend Award (2012)
• US Department of State Medal of Arts (2015)
• WEB Du Bois Medal, Harvard University (2018)

Kehinde Wiley: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Flourish: Kehinde Wiley x Museum Van Loon, Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam (2025)
• Kehinde Wiley—A Maze of Power, Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Morocco, Rabat (2025)
• Morocco 2024 Kehinde Wiley: A Maze of Power, Museum of Black Civilisations, Dakar (2024)
• Senegal 2023 Colourful Realm, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles (2023)
• Havana, Sean Kelly, New York City (2023)
• Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence, de Young Museum, San Francisco (and Houston) (2023)
• Maze of Power, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris (2022) A Portrait of a Young Gentleman, Huntington Museum, San Marino (2021)
• Kehinde Wiley at The National Gallery, The National Gallery, London (2021)
• Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley, Brooklyn Museum, New York City (2020)
• Tahiti – Kehinde Wiley, Galerie Templon, Paris (2019)
• Spotlight – Selections from Kehinde Wiley’s The World Stage: Israel, Skirball Cultural Centre, Los Angeles (2018)
• Kehinde Wiley: Trickster, Sean Kelly, New York City (2017)
• Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (and on tour) (2016)
• Kehinde Wiley: Memling, Taft Museum, Cincinnati (2014)
• An Economy of Grace, Sean Kelly, New York City (2012)
• Black Light, Deitch Projects, New York City (2009)
• Kehinde Wiley, Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels (2006)
• Faux/Real, Deitch Projects, New York City (2003)
• Passing/Posing, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago (2002)

Select Group Exhibitions

• The Audacity of Scale, Sean Kelly, New York City (2026)
• Pop to Present: American Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts+, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (2025)
• Flowers Forever. Flowers in Art and Culture, Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg (2024)
• Spike Lee: Creative Sources, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York City (2023)
• I Can’t Breathe, Brainlab Headquarters, Munich (2022)
• Black American Portraits, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2021)
• T_he Shape of Abstraction: Selections from the Ollie Collection_, Saint Louis Museum of Art (2020)
• In Context: Africans in America, Goodman Gallery and Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg (2016)
• Study from the Human Body, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2014)
• Being American, School of Visual Arts, New York City (2011)
• Down, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2008)
• Hangar—7 Edition 4, Salzburg Airport, Salzburg (2006)
• The New York Mets and Our National Pastime, Queens Museum of Art, New York City (2004)
• Black Romantic, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City (2002)

Further Reading

• Kehinde Wiley’s Instagram
• Kehinde Wiley’s website
• 2021 interview with the Observer
• Artist profile page at Sean Kelly Gallery

Kehinde Wiley FAQs

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