Kehinde Wiley
Subtitle: The World Stage: Brazil
By: [essays by Brian Keith Jackson and Kimberly Cleveland, Ph.D.]
Contributors: Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California
Edition: 2500
Publisher: Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California
Published: November 2009
Place of publication: Culver City, California
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 64
ISBN-13: 9781427613738
Subjects: African Americans in art -- Exhibitions
Genres: Exhibitions.
Work titles: 41 color images
First sentence: A stick, a stone,
It’s the end of the road,
It’s the rest of a stump,
It’s a little alone
It’s a sliver of glass,
It is life, it’s the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It’s a trap, it’s a gun
The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush

These are the beginning lyrics of Antonio “Tom” Carlos Jobim’s Waters of March, a song considered to be a Brazilian national treasure. Its words ring in the end of summer, availing the rainy season, perhaps a cleansing after the soiled white clothing of New Year’s festivities and the Sambas of Carnival are but a memory. It’s a slower season, whereby reflection ushers the hopes of the seasons to come.

Unlike most popular songs, Waters of March is not presented in narrative form. It has no beginning, middle and end. It  is a piece of art whereby the various aspects of its phrases ultimately exist as one, revealing something more nuanced than the simplicity that might appear on the surface.

This, too, is true of the work of portrait painter Kehinde Wiley and his visit to Rio de Janeiro in March 2008 for the third installment of his World Stage project, in which he sets up satellite studios at various locales throughout the world. While in Rio, the March rains remained at bay, offering Wiley a plentiful sun, a crystal view.
Description: This volume includes a selection of 22 new portrait paintings from Kehinde Wiley's multinational World Stage
series, which has included Africa and China in the past and now moves on to Brazil. Kehinde Wiley’s The World
Stage: Brazil was exhibited at Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California, April 4 – May 30, 2009.

Through Kehinde Wiley’s extensive investigative exchange, the artist’s contemporary yet historical oeuvre
accentuates international cultures and their denizens, evoking discourse on an ever-expanding examination of
globalization. During Wiley’s residency in Rio de Janeiro, Afro-Brazilian men became the impetus for the majestic
paintings, inspired by the iconic nationalistic sculptures that line the city streets and anchor its parks. Statesmen,
noblemen, and the elite of Brazil are erased from their perches; the young black and brown men from present-day
favelas are aggrandized. In tandem with the homoerotic undertone, Wiley further challenges the realm of the
conventional male gaze. The viewer is forced to confront notions of the inherent colonial influence, exoticism and
festishization.

Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles in 1977 and resides in New York and Beijing, China. Often conceptualizing
elaborate installation-based exhibitions, Wiley is one of the most well known emerging artists of the past decade,
Wiley’s work has been the subject of multiple exhibitions including solo exhibitions at The Studio Museum in
Harlem (New York, NY), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), John Kohler Arts Center (Milwaukee, WI), Columbus
Museum (Columbus, OH), The Brooklyn Museum of Art (Brooklyn, NY). Wiley has been included in group exhibitions
at the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) Museum of Contemporary Art,
Cleveland (Cleveland, OH), Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (Detroit, MI), Nasher Museum of Contemporary Art
(Durham, NC), National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (Warsaw, Poland) and the Whitney Museum (New York, NY).

Brian Keith Jackson is an award-winning author of three novels, a playwright, and a writer on arts and culture. His
work has appeared as wall text for private and public art institutions, as well as on National Public Radio, and in
the New York Times, New York Magazine, the London Observer, Vibe, and Paper, among others.

Kimberly Cleveland, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Art History at Georgia State University, is a specialist in African
and Latin American art. Her primary areas of research are modern and contemporary Afro-Brazilian art and artists.
She writes about questions of race, identity, and regional artistic influences.