“Kehinde Wiley Faux Real.” Issue Magazine (Fall 2003)

In the spring of 2001 Kehinde Wiley completed his MFA in Painting at Yale University and then moved to New York to participate in the Artist-in-Residence Program at The Studio Museum in Harlem. During his first week in Harlem, he came across a seemingly insignificant piece of litter, which would transform his oeuvre. That afternoon, en route from 126th Street and Morningside to The Studio Museum, he found a crinkled letter-size sheet of paper blowing down the sidewalk with a dirty color photograph affixed to it: a mug shot of a young black man. “CONFIDENTIAL: FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT PURPOSES ONLY” and the man’s name were inscribed on top. This trashed confidential document, containing this individual’s name, alleged criminal record, and photograph, disturbed Wiley. It labeled this identified yet depersonalized man, whose presence was absent, whose nostalgia was utterly non-stalgic, and whose skeletons forever unclosetable. Not quite sure why, Wiley picked up the document and pinned it to his studio wall, where it remained for an entire year, ultimately becoming the inspiration for his Passing/Posing series.

After years of studying European masters from Titian and Giorgione to Fragonard and Boucher, to Gainsborough and Constable, Wiley located the nexus of his artistic practice that afternoon. This found object forced him to rethink the dizzying myriad of learned notions of portraiture, both in relation to the history of Western art as well as to himself, as a “young African-American figurative painter.” It gave rise to what he calls “a sort of anti-portrait painting” with irony and sincerity. This interview with Wiley illustrates how.

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“Kehinde Wiley Faux Real.” Issue Magazine (Fall 2003)
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