Kehinde Wiley

Dear reader, If you have picked up this magazine it is likely for one of three reasons. One, you love Juxtapoz, and for that, we thank you. Two, you love the work of Kehinde Wiley, and in that, we join you. Or three, you were out-and-about in the world when the image on the cover of this issue beckoned. It so struck you that it became a personal mission, a visceral urge, a divine calling, to discover more about the artist with the magical mind who made such a portrait, and with that, we welcome you. 

 

I specifically remember the moment I saw my first Kehinde Wiley work, strolling about the Seattle Art Museum when they exhibited A New Republic. I remember looking up at Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps, ready for the horseman to jump out of the canvas—and trample me—with both hooves and Timbs. I believe I stood in front of Judith and Holofernes for a good fifteen minutes, ready to get on my knees and wash the feet of my newfound queen. Throughout the exhibit, feelings swirled around in my mind. Even today, when I stand before a Wiley work, words tend to escape my brain. I smell color. I see music. My skin tingles with goosebumps. Plainly, his work unlocked something from within, and for the first time, art made so much sense to me. 

I’m sure that if there was a list of people who shared this exact same experience, that note paper would go `round the world twice, in twelve-point font. The man’s a legend. But what exactly is the magic formula that conjures such allure? Is it the path of dignity that he’s forged upon gallery walls for those with Black skin? Is it his fearlessness in reconfiguring the notion of masculinity? His adoration of the Black male body? Is it the floral backdrops that splendidly encircle his sitters in Mother Nature’s nurturing hands? His compulsion, not to whitewash, but to rewrite history? His ability to both honor and critique? To paint dark skin like gently warmed Hershey’s chocolate? There are a thousand more, but his ability to balance them all on a tightrope is clearly more than just a trick of the hand.

 

Just this past year Wiley opened the exhibition An Archaeology of Silence, on view at the Venice Bienniale, where his meditative works explored the despair and exasperation with young Black mortality. An exhibition at the National Gallery of London, The Prelude, placed Black sitters at the forefront of Western landscape traditions, expanding on his hallmark, the absence of Blackness within European art. But it’s not always so heavy, like his portrait of Dr. Dre for an Interscope Records exhibition at LACMA. He has mentored artists through his Senegal-based artist-in-residency program Black Rock which he founded in 2019 and kept afloat throughout the pandemic. And, of course, his monumental portrait of former President Barack Obama continues to travel around the United States, years after its historic debut. And, and, and… That’s a lot of magic.

 

Now it’s a pastime of mine to watch Wiley’s numerous interviews and immerse myself in his soothing baritone. After allowing his words to echo in my subconscious there is one particular quote of his that has stuck with me: “Art should do more than point. Art should have an opinion. It should be something that says, ‘I believe in this more than that.’” 

 

But at its core, isn’t magic just the application of actions to mold belief? And with all that is going on in the world, the little magic that remains has seemed to crumple into a pile on the floor. What is often left for me is the magic of art—and in that, I still believe.

Kehinde Wiley: How do I take care of myself and find joy? I suppose the work that I do is a way of engaging a deeply beautiful and terrible world and having the ability to say something about it. That allows me to feel less powerless, even though I know art has no revolutionary capacity at its core, it's entirely revolutionary.

 

On an individual level, perhaps I can't affect radical and broad change, but I think if I allow my work to point to the things that make me happy in the world, it nods towards the gravitational pull of the moral world that I want to live in. Something like that. 

Building community is really important because it works. The only reason why I am where I am is because some key people took a chance on me and allowed me to learn from them and to build upon the knowledge and skill sets that they carried. I try to create a space wherein the blast zone and the touchstone for that conversation happens in West Africa. 

 

The idea is to invite people, creative people from every nation and of every color, to Africa and to explore not only their own creative practices but to explore Africa itself and perhaps be transformed by it. In so doing, I hope that I'll be enriching artists’ lives, enriching the continent of Africa, and in a very selfish way, enriching my own life. 

A split-second decision, but there's oftentimes a moment to watch people move, and body language, to watch how they dress and adorn. To watch how they fit into society. 

 

Well, to be honest, a lot of men are attracted to swords and sticks—objects to smite someone with. People are attracted to swords, horses, domination, and war. It's a kind of fascinating thing across the history of art, and it hasn't changed in all these centuries as exemplified by the choices that are being made. 

I don't feel any obligation to make any certain type of work. I feel drawn to making work in response to vulnerability and states of power in painting. The core DNA of my work is about the impossibility of the type of masculinity that's being beamed into the world by virtue of American culture. I certainly look forward to making art in a world in which these types of other answers were not possible. 

 

I grew up in the Crenshaw South Central area of Los Angeles. In the ’80s and ’90s, Dre was essentially the soundtrack to my coming of age. The Chronic was one of those primary centralizing cultural touchstones that we, my twin brother and I, my early friends, and my artistic collaborators, all have in common. As the culture continues to evolve and language becomes more and more complex, these essential moments, touchstones in the culture, only continue to inspire and inform the evolution of culture. 

Well, the centrality of Black creative content is relatively new in the American experience, at least in terms of popular culture. My mother was someone who was trying to keep me away from street and state violence. And she was trying to find an arts organization that could literally do the babysitting, keeping us away from the ills of society at the time. Fortunately, it was a cultural program. It was an arts organization. So, I stuck with it for a number of years and it's led to where we are now. 

 

Well, it's clear that the Obama portrait has made me incredibly recognizable as an artist, but it's also clear that I would've had to gain a certain amount of respect and notoriety in order to be invited to make the painting in the first place. 

My hope is that through people constantly discovering the Obama portraits that both I and Amy Sherald created, they'll be able to see that as an entryway, a gateway through which they can explore some of my lesser-known bodies of work and understand that my work has continued to change and evolve, as the world has. 

I'm working on my next exhibition in Los Angeles at Roberts Projects, which will feature, perhaps, some surprising ways of exploring the Black body and landscape.