One of the most renowned contemporary artists of his generation, Kehinde Wiley made his initial mark on the art world with bold portraits of African American men posed against vibrant backgrounds and striking confident poses familiar to viewers from canonical works of Western art. In recent years Wiley’s work has gone global, with the artist’s “World Stage” series transporting his signature aesthetic to locales as diverse as China, Brazil, India, and Nigeria. In 2011 Wiley took this project to Israel, recruiting subjects in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Lod. The remarkable portraits that resulted feature sitters of Ethiopian, Mizrahi, and Askenazi Jewish descent, as well as Arab Israelis, all enveloped by intricate backdrops and displayed in custom frames inspired by Jewish papercuts and Near Eastern decorative traditions. Wiley’s World Stage: Israel, exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York in 2012, captures the often overlooked religious and ethnic diversity and interconnectedness of contemporary Israeli society. In this seminar-style session, we will explore these arresting portraits and the issues they engage.
