Why Art is Political

Kehinde Wiley Photo Credit: ArtInfoPiggybacking on last week’s post on the Caribbean economy, this week I wanted to take an artistic perspective on island politics. I am  a big fan of Kehinde Wiley’s work, and I always like finding an opportunity to talk about him. I had brunch last weekend with a couple of friends who were not familiar with his work. I told them that he is kind of an artistic interpreter for the hip-hop generation.

He is known for taking black and brown people and putting them in traditionally European portraiture. For the last few years he has been doing “The World Stage” series, where he paints poor people mostly from developing countries in heroic poses; poses that have historically been reserved for the privileged class. The portraits really make you think about history, race, class and power.

Here is World Stage Jamaica:

And here is World Stage Haiti (The book for this part of the series comes out 23 June!)

Finally, his new exciting project, An Economy of Grace, focuses on black women: