Author Description

This volume includes a selection of 22 new portrait paintings from Kehinde Wiley's multinational World Stage series, which has included Africa and China in the past and now moves on to Brazil. Kehinde Wiley’s The World Stage: Brazil was exhibited at Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California, April 4 – May 30, 2009. Through Kehinde Wiley’s extensive investigative exchange, the artist’s contemporary yet historical oeuvre accentuates international cultures and their denizens, evoking discourse on an ever-expanding examination of globalization. During Wiley’s residency in Rio de Janeiro, Afro-Brazilian men became the impetus for the majestic paintings, inspired by the iconic nationalistic sculptures that line the city streets and anchor its parks. Statesmen, noblemen, and the elite of Brazil are erased from their perches; the young black and brown men from present-day favelas are aggrandized. In tandem with the homoerotic undertone, Wiley further challenges the realm of the conventional male gaze. The viewer is forced to confront notions of the inherent colonial influence, exoticism and festishization. Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles in 1977 and resides in New York and Beijing, China. Often conceptualizing elaborate installation-based exhibitions, Wiley is one of the most well known emerging artists of the past decade, Wiley’s work has been the subject of multiple exhibitions including solo exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), John Kohler Arts Center (Milwaukee, WI), Columbus Museum (Columbus, OH), The Brooklyn Museum of Art (Brooklyn, NY). Wiley has been included in group exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (Cleveland, OH), Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (Detroit, MI), Nasher Museum of Contemporary Art (Durham, NC), National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (Warsaw, Poland) and the Whitney Museum (New York, NY). Brian Keith Jackson is an award-winning author of three novels, a playwright, and a writer on arts and culture. His work has appeared as wall text for private and public art institutions, as well as on National Public Radio, and in the New York Times, New York Magazine, the London Observer, Vibe, and Paper, among others. Kimberly Cleveland, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Art History at Georgia State University, is a specialist in African and Latin American art. Her primary areas of research are modern and contemporary Afro-Brazilian art and artists. She writes about questions of race, identity, and regional artistic influences.