Kehinde Wiley, a New York-based portrait artist, brought his art exhibition “A New Republic” to the Phoenix Art Museum last Friday.
His work depicts the culture of black America as well as the globalization of minority representation in art through stained glass art, bronze sculptures and video elements in “A New Republic.”
He said one of the things that’s different about “A New Republic” is that you are displaced as a viewer, and there is no chronology or organizing principle. Wiley said that stained glass, one of his newer pursuits, has been an endeavor of working with light and how it shines off of the different colored glasses.
“When dealing with stained glass you have to realize the religious nature of the glass,” Wiley said. “Much of my work deals with the sacred and the profane, the sacred space for culture.”
Wiley said adults often define a system of what is acceptable or unacceptable in art and the exhibitions they view, a behavior that his art process challenges.
“My work sort of does away with that system, it problematizes that system, but it participates in it at once,” Wiley said.
He said the history of women depicted in art is much different in his work than it is seen more traditionally where the eye and the canvas become a sexualized experience of women. Wiley said the history of women in painting is the history of men looking at women.
Wiley said the process of casting women to model for his art lays bare foundational rules that have nothing to do with him.
“It’s not about the you that you occupy, it’s about the world that you inherit,” Wiley said. “The world I inherit is often times beautiful and terrible, but what I wanted to do was to build a mountain of beauty that became so heavy that if folds in on itself.”
He said that it is difficult for a homosexual man of color to take sides in global and societal issues when there is already a side that is pre-described for him.
Wiley said his experience in countries such as Israel and Haiti were multidimensional, difficult and emotional all in one.
He said he questioned himself on what would give him the right to come into countries like Israel and have anything valuable to say.
“I was more interested in the people than I was the politics,” Wiley said. “I see those brown bodies and I see those identity questions and I want to respond in whatever way I can.”
Gilbert Vicario, Selig Family Chief Curator for the Phoenix Art Museum, said that he met Wiley the day before the exhibit opened and spent two whole days with him.
“He’s a really fun guy,” Vicario said. “What was appealing to us was the fact that he has touched so many people’s lives.”
Vicario said the Phoenix Art Museum was fortunate to bring Wiley’s work to Phoenix since he is a rising star in the art world.
He said that Wiley is branching out onto a global level through his work in countries such as China, Brazil, Senegal, Nigeria and others.
“The style that you see his models wear has become a global style,” Vicario said. “He is thinking about global economies and how they affect communities.”
Vicario said that it is important work because globalization is driving the taste for buying merchandise and participating in culture.
He mentions how in one of Wiley’s bronze sculptures, a man with a shoe on his head, depicts the many shoemakers in third-world countries who wouldn’t be able to afford the shoes they are making.
Vicario said seeing Wiley’s stained glass art for the first time in “A New Republic” was a surprising and emotional experience.
“Everybody has been excited to see his new direction moving beyond the painting,” he said. “They have an expectation of this artist.”
Vicario said that African American hair, style and culture has been a large part of Wiley’s artistic style since 2001. Wiley’s exhibit “A New Republic” opened to the public on Oct. 7 and will be displayed at the Phoenix Art Museum until Jan. 8, 2017.
Phoenix resident Malcolm Brinkley said he was not familiar with Wiley until last Friday, but he had been going with his art and music friend to First Friday for the past five years.
Brinkley said it spoke volumes to see an exhibit that featured a black artist who is speaking to the diaspora of modern black America.
“From the time I walked into the exhibit I lost it,” Brinkley said. “It is passion, it is beautiful, it is black, and it is bold.”
Brinkley said people never get the chance to see black America through a black person’s lens and it is good to see that being black is seen as beautiful.
“His art and his creative eye inspire me to be myself, and I believe it does the same to other artists who look like myself,” Brinkley said.
Contact the reporter at Brianna.Bradley@asu.edu.
