Kehinde Wiley Los Angeles, United States, b. 1977

Born in Los Angeles in 1977, Kehinde Wiley lives between New York and Beijing.

Wiley holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and a Master’s degree from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Wiley has specialized in naturalistic portraits of African Americans. His colorful works, based on photographs of young men whom Wiley encounters on the street in cities around the world, envelop their subjects in the visual signs and rhetoric of heroism, power, majesty and the sublime.

His solo exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; the Jewish Museum, New York; Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris; Apparel Design Gallery, Berlin; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Portland Art Museum; and the Seattle Art Museum, among others.

Selected group exhibitions include the Seoul Museum of Art and the Los Angeles Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum, both in Los Angeles.

Wiley’s work can also be found in public collections throughout the United States, notably those of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minnesota; and the Oak Park Library, Chicago.