If Kehinde Wiley’s good enough for Barack Obama, he’s probably good enough for the rest of us. The American painter has just been announced as the first African American to paint an official portrait of an American president. But for this show of new paintings and video, he’s keeping his sights set on people a little further from power. Wiley’s most famous for his luxurious portraits on colourful backgrounds that draw on his subjects’ African heritage, but in this series of nine paintings, he weaves traditional history painting into the mix. The fit, young, handsome men he depicts are shown sailing, swimming or looking out to sea in a traditional European style, but they remain contemporary in their execution and in the clothes worn by the sitters. But it’s the fact that young, black men like these would never have been painted in such a way 100 years ago that really roots them in the present. As deep as that sounds, the concept just feels a bit basic.
If there was a hint of a reference to mass migration in the paintings, then ‘Narrenschiff’ – Wiley’s first film – brings it home. Narrated with quotes on the effects of colonialism, we see the same young men celebrated in the paintings swim, float and play in water, evoking news footage of tragedies of mass migration.
This is a beautiful, thought-provoking and uplifting exhibition but it can still somehow leave you cold. There’s something about painting these men in a historical style that somehow consigns them to the past, ignoring the fact that these are modern people, alive now. Maybe that’s why these paintings lack some of the dynamism of Wiley’s earlier portraits, a deficit that’s offset by the strong political content of the film, but not completely resolved.