Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology Of Silence

Travelling exhibition, San Francisco - Miami - Houston - Minneapolis, 18 March 2023 - 27 May 2025

A world-renowned visual artist working in painting, sculpture and video, Kehinde Wiley 1977-) is best known for his depictions of contemporary African-Americans and Afro-Diasporics that subvert the hierarchies and conventions of European and American portraiture. Wiley became the first African-American artist to paint an official presidential portrait for former US President Barack Obama, and his work is included in the collections of over 40 public institutions worldwide. He lives and works in Beijing, Dakar and New York.

This exhibition catalogue presents a new body of paintings and sculptures by Wiley that confronts the legacies of colonialism through the visual language of the fallen figure. It develops a subject the artist first explored in 2008 in his Down series - a group of large-scale portraits of young black men inspired by his encounter with Hans Holbein the Younger's Dead Christ in the Grave. The works in this volume extend these considerations to include men and women from around the world whose senseless deaths, often unacknowledged or silenced, are transformed into a powerful elegy of global resistance against state-sanctioned violence.